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Fricassee Chicken

A stew of boiled chicken and pork, thickened with flour and seasoned with salt, served with gravy over toasted bread.

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 ↓

Fricassee Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean the chicken.

  2. Boil the chicken in water until tender (about 1 hour for young chickens and 3–4 hours for older ones).

  3. Keep the chicken covered with water while cooking. Skim the surface as needed.

  4. Cut the chicken into pieces.

Brown the meat

  1. In a skillet, fry the pork slices until brown. Remove the pork slices.

  2. Fry the chicken pieces in the pork fat until browned. Remove the chicken pieces and place them in a deep dish.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Thicken the boiling liquid with flour mixed in cold water. Boil the mixture well.

  2. Season the liquid with coarse sea salt. Add butter if desired.

  3. Pour the seasoned liquid over the chicken.

  4. Serve with toasted bread dipped or spread with the gravy.

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 meat, which becomes tender through long simmering in water.
Pork
Its rendered fat browns the chicken pieces and adds savory flavor.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the gravy.

The step that matters

Thickening the boiling liquid with flour. Flour must be mixed smoothly in cold water first and then boiled well; otherwise it clumps and stays raw-tasting, and starch only thickens fully once it has come to a boil.

“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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