Skip to main content
Main

Brown Fricassee

A browned chicken dish simmered in a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,148 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Brown Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the chicken pieces.

  2. Season the chicken with salt and pepper.

  3. Heat lard or beef dripping in a pan.

Fry and make the gravy

  1. Dredge the chicken pieces in flour and fry until golden brown, turning to cook both sides.

  2. Remove the chicken and place it on a dish.

  3. Add a little water and the gravy from the pan.

  4. Mix in the butter rolled in flour to thicken the gravy.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil and pour it over the chicken.

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 + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

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

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

Young chicken
Provides the main protein; its pieces are browned and then gently simmered in the gravy.
Flour
Coats the chicken so it browns in the fat, and thickens the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the gravy when rolled in flour and stirred in.

The step that matters

Frying the floured chicken until golden brown. Flour-coated pieces need enough hot fat and time to brown evenly; pale or greasy frying leaves a weak crust and a flat-tasting gravy, since the browned bits in the pan form the base of the sauce.

“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 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipes