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Brown Fricassee of Chicken

A chicken stew simmered in a butter and flour sauce with water, spices, and egg yolk, served with dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Brown Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the cut chicken, cooking until browned on both sides.

  3. Sprinkle flour and stir.

  4. Add water, salt, pepper, bay leaf, onion, and coloring caramel.

  5. Cover and simmer gently for one hour.

  6. Remove the chicken.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the egg yolk to the sauce.

  2. Strain the sauce over the chicken.

  3. Sprinkle finely cut parsley on top.

  4. Serve with dumplings.

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. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Chicken
Provides the main protein, and browning it builds savory flavor in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a smoother, richer texture.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the chicken and carries flavor into the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolk to the sauce. Egg yolk thickens when heated, so it can curdle or scramble if the sauce is boiling. Remove the sauce from strong heat before adding it and stir steadily.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, chicken, flour, pepper, egg, parsley. 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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