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Fricassee Chicken

A stew of chicken pieces simmered in broth, browned with salt pork and onion, finished with a flour‑based sauce and peas.

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

Fricassee Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Combine chicken pieces, warm water, salt, and celery in a pot.

  2. Cook slowly until tender.

  3. Remove chicken.

  4. Strain the celery from the cooking liquid.

Brown and make the sauce

  1. In a frying pan, fry salt pork and onion until the onion is soft.

  2. Add chicken to the hot fat and brown on all sides.

  3. Arrange chicken on a platter.

  4. Remove onion from the fat.

  5. Add flour.

  6. Gradually stir in the cooking liquid until smooth.

  7. Add peas or mushrooms and cook for 5 minutes.

  8. Pour sauce around the chicken.

  9. Garnish with toasted bread or crackers.

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. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

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; slow cooking in water makes it tender.
Salt pork
Supplies fat for frying and browning the chicken and onion, adding savory flavor.
Onion
Softens in the fat to add sweetness and aroma to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce as it is stirred in.
Chicken cooking liquid
Becomes the moist, flavorful base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cooking liquid to the flour. Stirring the liquid in gradually keeps the flour from clumping, so the sauce cooks up smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, celery, pork, onion, flour, bread):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, pork, onion, flour, bread. 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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