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Fricasseed Chicken

A stew of chicken parts simmered with wine, milk, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fricasseed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut off the wings and legs of the chickens, separate the breasts from the backs, and divide the backs crosswise.

  2. Cut off the necks and clean the gizzards, then put them with the livers and other parts into a saucepan.

  3. Add salt, pepper, and a little mace, cover with water, and stew until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the chicken parts and thicken ½ cup of water with 2 tablespoons of flour rubbed into 4 ounces of butter.

  2. Add 1 cup of milk and boil together for a few minutes.

  3. Carefully stir in 8 tablespoons of white wine to avoid curdling.

Finish

  1. Return the chicken to the pan and shake until heated through.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Chicken + white winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,904 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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 meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when rubbed into butter and cooked with water.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries the flour to thicken the sauce smoothly.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the sauce as it boils.
White wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the white wine. Adding acidic wine to hot milk can make the milk proteins curdle. Stirring it in carefully and gradually keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, flour, butter, milk, white wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, flour, butter, milk, white wine. 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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