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Fricassee of Chickens, with Mushrooms, Etc.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chickens, with Mushrooms, Etc.

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Draw and singe the chickens over a charcoal flame.

  2. Cut the chickens into small joints: remove wings and legs, then make parallel cuts on the back.

  3. Place the chicken on its side and cut the leg and fillet, then repeat on the other side.

  4. Remove thigh bones, separate back and breast, and trim without waste.

  5. Cut the back into two pieces and steep in tepid water for 10 minutes, squeezing to extract blood.

  6. Strew the bottom of a stewpan with thinly sliced carrot, onion, and celery.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, onion, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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