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Fricassee of Cold Chicken

A fricassee made with cooked chicken, flour, butter, cream, and stock, simmered and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fricassee of Cold Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the skin from the chicken breast and cut the rest into nice pieces.

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

  3. Sprinkle with flour, pepper, salt, and mace.

Make the gravy

  1. Mix the butter with the flour and add the cream and stock or water.

  2. Pour the mixture over the chicken and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the breast in the center and arrange the other pieces around it, then pour the gravy on 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

All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and cream mixture into a gravy and lightly coats the chicken.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving the gravy a smooth texture.
Cream or milk
Adds body and richness, helping the gravy become smooth and creamy.
Ground mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the chicken and sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the gravy. Flour needs to simmer in the liquid long enough to swell and thicken fully; if it boils too hard or stops early, the sauce can stay floury or scorch on the bottom of the pan.

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.

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