Skip to main content
Main

Peicassee Op Cold Chicken

A cold chicken stew with pieces of chicken simmered in a gravy of butter, cream, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Peicassee Op Cold Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the skinned chicken breast in a saucepan with the other pieces around it.

  2. Dredge the chicken with flour, pepper, salt, and mace.

Cook

  1. Add butter, cream, and white stock or water to the saucepan.

  2. Let it simmer for about 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the breast in the center of a dish, with the other pieces arranged around it, and pour the gravy over the top.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cream and stock into a gravy as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour into the gravy.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and a mild sweetness, forming the creamy body of the gravy.
White stock or water
Provides the liquid that the flour thickens and the chicken simmers in.

The step that matters

Simmering the flour-thickened liquid. Flour only thickens fully when the liquid simmers long enough for its starch to swell. Cream can also scorch or separate if it boils hard, so keep the heat gentle and stir to keep the gravy smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, pepper, butter, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, pepper, butter, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes