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Fricasseed Fowls or Chickens

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,092 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Fricasseed Fowls or Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare the chickens by removing the skin and carving them neatly.

  2. Reserve the wings, breasts, merrythoughts, and thighs; stew the inferior joints with mace, herbs, peppercorns, water, and salt.

  3. Reduce the mixture by a third, strain the gravy, cool it, and skim off the fat.

  4. Arrange the joints for fricassee in one layer and pour enough gravy to nearly cover them.

  5. Add the lemon rind and simmer gently for 30 to 45 minutes.

  6. Season with salt, pounded mace, and cayenne to taste, thicken with arrow-root, and stir in boiling cream.

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 + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Mace + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Chicken + macetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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