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Fricasseed Chickens

A stew of chicken, salt pork, salt, flour, and butter served over biscuits or dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Fricasseed Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Place the cut-up chicken in a pot and cover with cold water.

  2. Add the salt pork and boil for 1 hour if the chicken is young, or 2 to 3 hours if it is an older fowl.

  3. When the chicken is half cooked, add the salt.

  4. Continue boiling until a fork easily slips through the meat.

Make the sauce

  1. Reduce the cooking liquid to 1 quart by boiling, then remove the chicken.

  2. Stir in the flour and boil for 5 minutes, adding more salt if needed.

  3. Add butter to taste and strain the sauce over the chicken.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken on hot split baking powder biscuits or top 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. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Chicken
Provides the meat that becomes tender through long, slow boiling.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and flavor to the cooking liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky finish to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and boil for 5 minutes. Flour must boil long enough for its starch to gelatinize fully; otherwise the sauce stays pasty and tastes raw. Stirring constantly prevents lumps from forming as the starch hydrates.

“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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