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Fricasseed Fowls or Chickens

A stew of chicken pieces cooked with mace, savory herbs, and a gravy thickened with arrowroot or flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fricasseed Fowls or Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the skin from the chickens and carve them neatly.

  2. Reserve the wings, breasts, merrythoughts, and thighs.

Make the gravy

  1. Stew the inferior joints with mace and savory herbs until tender.

  2. Strain the stew and use the liquid to make gravy.

  3. Add lemon juice, cayenne, and minced parsley to the gravy.

  4. Thicken the gravy with arrowroot or flour mixed with butter.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + arrowroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the meat for the dish, with the inferior joints stewed to make the gravy.
Arrowroot or flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat rather than running thin.
Butter
Adds richness and helps bind the flour or arrowroot into the gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with arrowroot or flour mixed with butter. Starch must be fully mixed with fat and stirred into hot liquid so it hydrates evenly; otherwise it clumps and leaves the gravy lumpy or thin. Keep the gravy below a hard boil while thickening so the starch swells smoothly and the texture stays silky.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, butter, lemon, parsley, arrowroot. 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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