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Mr. Demorest's Chicken Fricassee

A stew of chicken and salt pork thickened with flour and milk, flavored with herbs and celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mr. Demorest's Chicken Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Joint the chickens, dividing the wings, sides, breast, and backbones.

  2. Soak the chicken pieces in clear water for 30 minutes.

Cook the chicken

  1. Place the chicken in a stew-pan with the salt pork and barely cover with water.

  2. Simmer on low heat for 3 hours until tender.

  3. Remove the chicken.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Mix flour with cold milk.

  2. Add parsley, sage, and thyme and stir the herbs into the cooking liquid.

  3. Keep stirring until it boils.

  4. Season with pepper and salt.

  5. Return the chicken to the gravy and let it boil for a few moments.

  6. Garnish with green tops of 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. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and flavor to the cooking liquid as it simmers with the chicken.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy when stirred and boiled.
Cold milk
Mixed with flour first so the flour disperses smoothly, then enriches the gravy.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and milk into the gravy. Flour added to hot liquid without first being blended smoothly with cold milk forms lumps. Stirring constantly while it comes to a boil lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the gravy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pork, flour, milk, sage, thyme, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pork, flour, milk, sage, thyme, 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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