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Fricassee of Chicken

A stew of simmered chicken in a milk and mace sauce served with fried bread and bacon rolls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken into small pieces and remove the skin.

  2. Simmer the chicken with any odd bits in milk with mace for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a pan and stir in flour without browning.

  2. Gradually add milk while stirring until it boils.

  3. Add the chicken to the sauce and simmer gently until heated through.

Serve

  1. Serve with snippets of fried bread and small rolls of bacon.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with melted butter.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the mace flavour.
Remains of cold chicken
Provides the main protein, gently reheated in the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour without browning. Cooking flour in butter until it is pale cooks out its raw taste and lets it thicken evenly. Browning changes the flavour and colour of the sauce, and stirring while adding milk prevents lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, butter, milk, pepper, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, butter, milk, pepper, bread. 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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