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Chicken Fricassee

A stew of chicken pieces thickened with bread, flour, spices, lemon, milk or cream, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chickens until tender, then skin and cut them into pieces.

  2. Place the chicken pieces in the bottom of a stew kettle.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine the crumbled bread, flour, cayenne pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  2. Pour the mixture over the chicken, then add the milk or cream and butter.

Stew

  1. Stew slowly until the mixture thickens, being careful not to stir.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provides the main protein and body of the dish.
Stale bread
Absorbs liquid and helps thicken the mixture as it stews.
Flour
Helps thicken the sauce into a smooth, cohesive texture.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing flavor and a silky mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Stew slowly without stirring. Gentle, undisturbed heat lets the bread and flour swell and thicken the sauce evenly. Stirring or boiling hard can break the emulsion of milk and butter and make the sauce grainy or separated.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, bread, flour, pepper, nutmeg, milk, butter):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, flour, pepper, nutmeg, milk, 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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