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Fricassee of Fowl or Chicken

A simmered chicken stew flavored with salt, pepper, parsley, cloves, mace, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricassee of Fowl or Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the chicken pieces well.

  2. Place them in a stewpan and cover with water.

Make the stock

  1. Season with salt, pepper, parsley, cloves, and mace.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the stock through a sieve into a basin.

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

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

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat, and the bones and connective tissue that give the stock body.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma to the stock.
Cloves
Add a warm, pungent aroma that flavours the stock.
Mace
Adds a warm, nutmeg-like aroma to the stock.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil and cook for 20 minutes. Once the liquid reaches a boil, keep it at a gentle simmer. Vigorous boiling agitates fat and proteins into the liquid, making the stock cloudy and the chicken tough and stringy.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, parsley, clove. 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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