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Chicken Fricassee

A chicken dish simmered in butter and thickened gravy, optionally garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Chicken Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Heat the cooking liquid with the chicken if it was boiled the day before.

  2. Add butter and a small amount of smooth thickening to the heated chicken.

  3. If the chicken is very fatty, you may not need to add butter.

  4. Gently stew for 7-8 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add finely chopped parsley if desired.

  2. Serve with the gravy poured 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. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  3. Chicken + parsleytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,314 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken
Provides the main meat, and its fat and juices flavor the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat, richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the gravy.
Smooth thickening
Starch swells when heated, thickening the cooking liquid into a gravy.

The step that matters

Stewing after adding the thickening. Starch must be heated gently and stirred so it swells evenly into a smooth gravy. Adding it lumpy or boiling too hard can make the gravy clump or taste raw.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter. 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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