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A Brown Fricassee of Chicken

A dish of browned chicken pieces simmered in a sauce thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork 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 Brown Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and cut up the chicken.

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken in as little water as possible until tender.

  2. Fry the salt pork in a frying pan until quite dry, then remove it.

  3. Add the chicken pieces to the pan, browning both sides.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Pour out the pork fat, add gravy from the boiling kettle, and thicken with flour.

  2. Add a lump of butter and pour the sauce over the chicken on a platter.

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. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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; boiling makes it tender and browning the pieces adds colour and flavour.
Salt pork
Its rendered fat carries flavour into the pan for browning the chicken and the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy finish to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken pieces in the pork fat. Browning creates colour and deeper savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. The pieces must be dry and the pan hot enough, or they steam and turn pale instead of browning.

“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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