Name: Brown Fricassee of Chicken
Ingredients: 1 chicken, cut into pieces; ¼ pound salt pork or 2 ounces butter; 2 tablespoons flour; 1 pint boiling water; salt and pepper to taste; 1 teaspoon onion juice (optional)

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 ↓

Brown Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

1 chicken, cut into pieces
¼ pound salt pork or 2 ounces butter
2 tablespoons flour
1 pint boiling water
salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon onion juice (optional)

Directions

Brown the chicken

Heat the salt pork or butter in a frying pan.
Add the chicken pieces, ensuring there is room to turn them, and cook until browned.
Stir in the flour and cook for 2 minutes.

Make the gravy and simmer

Add the boiling water and stir until the gravy is smooth and boiling.
Season with salt and pepper, cover the pan, and simmer gently until the chicken is tender.
If desired, add onion juice before serving.

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.

Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,417 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,814 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,214 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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, which becomes tender through gentle simmering in the gravy.
Salt pork or butter: Fat for browning the chicken and adding rich flavour to the dish.
Flour: Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy as it cooks with the boiling water.

The step that matters

Stirring in the boiling water. Adding the liquid to the flour and fat while stirring keeps the gravy smooth. Pouring it in cold or without stirring can leave lumps of cooked flour.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pork, flour, pepper):

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits better
Spinachfits about as well
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pork, flour, pepper. 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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Brown Fricassee of Chicken