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Brown Fricassee of Chicken

A chicken fricassee cooked with salt pork or butter, flour, and boiling water, seasoned with salt, pepper, and optional onion juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Brown Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. Heat the salt pork or butter in a frying pan until hot.

  2. Add the chicken pieces, ensuring there is room to turn them.

  3. Cook until browned.

  4. Stir in the flour.

  5. Cook for 2 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Add the boiling water.

  2. Stir until the gravy is smooth and boiling.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Cover the pan.

  5. Simmer gently until the chicken is tender.

  6. Add onion juice before serving (if desired).

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. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. 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 and flavour, browned for colour and savour.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy as it heats with the water.
Salt pork or butter
Supplies fat for browning the chicken and carries flavour through the pan.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the water until smooth. Flour clumps when it meets liquid unevenly. Stirring until smooth and boiling lets the starch disperse and thicken the gravy evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. 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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