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A White Fricassee of Chicken

A white fricassee of chicken made with pork, milk, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and chicken match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

A White Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Fry the pork slices in a deep kettle.

  2. Remove the pork and add the chicken to the kettle.

  3. Cover the chicken with water and season with salt and pepper while cooking.

  4. Once cooked, remove the chicken to a serving platter.

  5. Leave just enough water in the kettle for gravy; save any excess for soup stock.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Smooth the flour in a little cold milk, then add enough milk to make ½ cup.

  2. Pour the milk mixture into the gravy in the kettle and bring to a boil.

  3. Pour the gravy over the chicken and serve immediately.

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. Pork + chickentop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

  2. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy as it heats.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the gravy, making it white and rich.
Pork
Fried first in the kettle, adding savory fat and flavor to the cooking liquid.
Chicken
Main protein, cooked gently in water to yield tender meat and broth for the gravy.

The step that matters

Smooth the flour in cold milk before adding it to the gravy. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch surface gelatinizes unevenly. Mixing it into cold milk first disperses the starch so the gravy thickens smoothly.

“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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