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Fricassee of Cold Chicken

A stew of cold chicken pieces cooked in a butter‑flour gravy with stock, cream or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fricassee of Cold Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Skin the breast of the chicken and cut the rest into nice pieces.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chicken pieces and dredge them in flour, salt, pepper, and mace.

  3. Pour in the white stock or water (or cream/milk) and simmer for about 20 minutes until warmed through.

  4. Transfer to a dish and pour the gravy 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

Flour
Coats the chicken and thickens the liquid into a gravy.
Butter
Fats the pan and adds richness to the coating and gravy.
White stock or water
Forms the liquid that becomes the gravy and keeps the chicken moist.

The step that matters

Simmering the chicken in the liquid. Flour-coated pieces can clump or scorch if the heat is too high, so keep the simmer gentle. Simmering slowly lets the flour swell evenly, so the gravy thickens smoothly while the chicken warms through.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

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