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Fricassee of Chickens and Mushrooms

A creamy chicken and mushroom stew cooked with butter, flour, and broth, seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chickens and Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. Cut the chickens into pieces and brown them in butter.

  2. Add sliced mushrooms and cook until tender.

  3. Sprinkle flour over the mixture and stir well.

Simmer and serve

  1. Pour in chicken broth and simmer until the chicken is cooked through.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and chopped parsley before serving.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main protein and meaty body of the fricassee.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and soft, tender texture to the sauce.
Butter
Browns the chicken and carries flavour through the dish.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a silky sauce.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid that simmers the chicken and builds the sauce.

The step that matters

Sprinkle flour over the mixture and stir well. Flour must be stirred in evenly and cooked briefly with the fats and juices, or it forms lumps and tastes raw. Stirring it in before adding liquid lets the starch coat the pieces and thicken smoothly once the broth is added.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

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