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Fricassee of Chickens with Mushrooms

A stew of chicken pieces simmered in a mushroom sauce made with butter, flour, salt, pepper, and water or broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chickens with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Singe the chickens.

  2. Remove the insides.

  3. Chop off the feet close to the thigh bone.

  4. Remove the pinions, wings, and legs.

  5. Cut the chickens into pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a pot.

  2. Sauté the mushrooms.

  3. Add flour, salt, and pepper.

  4. Stir in water or broth to create a sauce.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the chicken pieces.

  2. Simmer until cooked through.

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 + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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).

Butter and flour 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

Chickens
Provide the meat that becomes tender and cooks through in the simmering sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture as they release juices into the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and helping the flour brown lightly.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Water or broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that gently cooks the chicken.

The step that matters

Simmer until cooked through. Gentle simmering cooks the chicken evenly without toughening the meat. Too hard a boil can make proteins seize and dry out, while undercooked pieces are unsafe, so check that the thickest parts are no longer pink and the juices run clear.

“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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