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Fricassee Chicken

A stew of chicken simmered in a sauce thickened with flour and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricassee Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut up the chickens and place them in a stew pan. Cover with cold water.

  2. Cover the pan and heat very slowly. Stew for about 1 hour or until tender (3-4 hours for older chickens).

Make the gravy

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and butter. Add celery if desired.

  2. Mix flour with a little water and add to the stew along with the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Let the mixture boil for 1 minute.

Serve

  1. Arrange the chicken on a warm platter, pour some gravy over it, and serve the rest in a separate dish.

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 + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 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 main protein and, as they stew, the body of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy as it heats.
Egg yolks
Enrich the gravy, giving it body and a richer texture when heated.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the stew and gravy.

The step that matters

Let the mixture boil for 1 minute. Flour needs to reach a boil to fully thicken and lose its raw starchy taste. Egg yolks added to hot liquid can curdle if overheated, so the gravy should be kept at a gentle boil and not allowed to scorch or separate.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, butter, flour, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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