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Fricasseed Chicken

A stew of chicken simmered in water, then coated in a sauce of cream, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Fricasseed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Sear the chicken and cut into serving pieces.

  2. Cover the chicken with boiling water, add salt and pepper, and simmer for 1 hour until tender, reducing the water to 1 pint.

  3. Remove all large bones and dredge the chicken with salt, flour, and pepper.

  4. Brown the chicken in hot water.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain the cooking liquid and remove the fat.

  2. Add cream or milk to the liquid and heat again.

  3. Melt butter in a saucepan, add flour, and mix well.

  4. Pour the milk and chicken liquid into the flour mixture, adding salt, pepper, celery salt, and lemon juice.

  5. Beat the egg, pour the sauce slowly over the egg, and stir well.

Serve

  1. Place the chicken on toast on a hot platter.

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

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

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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, and browning it adds savory flavor to the dish.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid mixture into a smooth sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and forms the base for the flour mixture.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and body, making the sauce creamy and smooth.
Egg
Thickens and enriches the sauce, giving it a richer texture when gently heated.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the sauce to the beaten egg. Pouring the hot sauce slowly into the beaten egg while stirring gently warms the egg gradually, so it thickens the sauce instead of scrambling.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, cream, butter, flour, lemon, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, cream, butter, flour, lemon, egg. 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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