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Brown Fricassee

A braised chicken dish with a brown sauce thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 the chicken

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

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

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Add a little water and the pan drippings to the pan.

  2. Stir in the butter rolled in flour to thicken the sauce.

  3. Bring the sauce 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein; frying browns its surface and seals in juices.
Flour
Coats the chicken to help it brown and thickens the pan sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, with flour helping it thicken smoothly.
Lard or beef dripping
Fat for frying that browns the flour-coated chicken and carries flavour into the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown, turning evenly. Flour-coated chicken browns through the Maillard reaction, which needs steady, moderate heat. Turning it lets both sides brown evenly without scorching, and the browned bits left in the pan give the sauce its colour and flavour.

“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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