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Fricasseed Chicken

A boiled and browned chicken served with a milk-based gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fricasseed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken in a small amount of water for 20 minutes, seasoning with pepper and salt.

  2. Remove the chicken and roll it in flour.

Brown and make the gravy

  1. Heat the butter or lard in a shallow pan until hot.

  2. Add the floured chicken to the pan and brown it well on all sides.

  3. Once browned, remove the chicken from the pan.

  4. Add the milk and a little flour to the pan, letting it simmer for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the gravy in a gravy boat alongside the chicken.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Flour
Coats the chicken so it browns well and thickens the milk into gravy.
Butter or lard
Conducts heat in the pan and adds fat for browning and flavour.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, which thickens as it simmers with flour.

The step that matters

Browning the floured chicken. Flour that is coated evenly and fat that is hot enough let the surface brown and form a crust. Crowded or cool pans steam the chicken instead, leaving pale, soft skin and weak flavour.

“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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