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Fricasseed Chicken

A braised chicken dish with bacon, pork fat, and browned flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Fricasseed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken with bacon in enough water to cover until tender.

  2. Fry some pork in a pan until cooked.

  3. Drain the chicken and fry it with the pork until browned.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the chicken and pour the broth into the frying pan with the pork fat.

  2. Add browned flour to thicken the broth and season with butter.

  3. Return the chicken to the gravy, ensuring the fat is hot for browning.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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; boiling makes it tender before it is browned.
Pork fat
Carries flavour into the browning step and gives the gravy a rich, savoury base.
Browned flour
Thickens the broth so it becomes a gravy that clings to the chicken.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, buttery flavour to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Returning the chicken to the hot fat. The fat must be hot when the chicken goes back in, so the surface browns rather than steams. Browning builds flavour through the Maillard reaction, and a cooler pan would soften the skin and dilute the gravy.

“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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