Name: A White Fricasee
Ingredients: 2 chickens; good veal broth (or boiling water); a bundle of sweet herbs

Why it works: Chicken and veal are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,243 recipes. Both carry 3-butanedione, which smells buttery, creamy. The science ↓

A White Fricasee

Ingredients

2 chickens
good veal broth (or boiling water)
a bundle of sweet herbs

Directions

Prepare

Cut the chickens into small pieces.
Soak the pieces in warm water to draw out the blood.

Cook

Place the chicken in a pot with veal broth or boiling water.
Stew gently with the bundle of sweet herbs.

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.

Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,243 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chickens: Provide the meat that becomes tender and flavorful as it stews gently in the liquid.
Veal broth: Supplies moisture and savory flavor to the stew, keeping the chicken tender and moist.
Sweet herbs: Add aromatic flavor to the broth as the chicken stews.

“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.