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Fricassee of Chicken

A stew of chicken pieces simmered with butter, flour, parsley, celery seed, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Wash the chicken and cut it into pieces as for frying.

  2. Place the chicken in a stewpan and cover with hot water.

  3. Add the celery seed and salt, then bring to a gentle boil, skimming off any scum.

  4. Cook until the chicken is tender, about 1 hour.

Finish the sauce

  1. In a bowl, rub together the butter and flour until smooth.

  2. Add the butter and flour mixture to the stewpan along with the chopped parsley.

  3. Let it stew for 15 minutes.

  4. Add the yolks of 2 raw eggs and stir gently, cooking for an additional 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve on a dish with boiled rice arranged around it.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 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. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and richness while blending with the flour to thicken it.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce when combined with butter.
Egg yolks (in the method)
Add richness and help thicken the sauce as they gently cook in the liquid.
Parsley
Contributes fresh, herbal aroma and a green flavour to the stewed sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but if the sauce boils hard after they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Stir gently and keep the heat low.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, 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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