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Fricasseed Chicken

Chicken pieces simmered with allspice, lemon, carrot, parsley, ham, and spices, then coated in cracker crumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fricasseed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut up the chicken and wash it carefully.

  2. Place the chicken in a stew-pan and cover it with water.

  3. Cook slowly until tender.

  4. Remove the chicken and add allspice, lemon zest and juice, chopped carrot, parsley, ham, red and black pepper, and salt to the cooking liquid.

Coat and fry

  1. Coat the chicken pieces in cracker crumbs, dip in the prepared liquid, then roll again in the crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot lard until golden brown.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Slow cooking in water makes the meat tender before it is coated and fried.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried in hot lard.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma from the zest and juice to the cooking liquid.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the cooking liquid that the coated chicken absorbs.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard until golden brown. The lard must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy and pale before the surface crisps.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, lemon, carrot, parsley, ham, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, lemon, carrot, parsley, ham, pepper. 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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