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Fricasseed Chickens

A stew of chicken pieces simmered with bacon or pork, seasoned with salt and pepper, finished with a butter and flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Braise the chicken

  1. Combine chicken pieces with bacon or pork slices in a pot.

  2. Sprinkle salt on each layer.

  3. Sprinkle pepper on each layer.

  4. Cover the pot.

  5. Simmer until the chicken is tender.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the chicken from the pot.

  2. Add butter to the pot.

  3. Add flour to the pot.

  4. Stir the butter and flour to combine.

  5. Return the chicken to the pot.

  6. Stew the chicken for a few more minutes.

  7. Pour off the gravy.

  8. Let the gravy brown in the pot before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken on toast, bread, or crackers.

  2. Pour the gravy over the served chicken.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow, moist simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor into the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it heats with the fat.
Bacon or pork
Releases fat and savory flavor into the pot as the chicken cooks.

The step that matters

Let the gravy brown in the pot before serving. Cooking the butter and flour mixture further gives the gravy a deeper, nutty color and flavor, while leaving it too pale or too long can change its taste and thickness.

“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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