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Brown Fricassee

A chicken fricassee cooked with butter, water, salt, pepper, and optional pork, served with a thickened gravy.

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 ↓

Brown Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. Melt the butter in a kettle.

  2. Add the cut-up chicken and pack it in the kettle.

  3. Cover and fry until browned, turning often.

Simmer and serve

  1. Once browned, add the water and cover.

  2. Cook until the chicken is tender.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, thicken the gravy, and serve.

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. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

  3. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that carries the browning and adds richness to the chicken and gravy.
Chicken
Main protein that turns tender as it cooks slowly in the covered kettle.
Water
Creates steam and liquid that cooks the chicken through and forms the base of the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken. Frying the chicken until well browned, turning often, builds flavor through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pieces or turning too rarely causes steaming instead, leaving the skin pale and the flavor flat.

“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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