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Fricasseed Chicken

A slow‑cooked chicken fricassee with salt pork, onions, allspice, cloves, catsup, browned flour, parsley, and brown sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fricasseed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean and cut up the chickens, then soak them in clear water for 30 minutes.

  2. Place the chickens in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Heat slowly.

Make the stew

  1. Cut the salt pork into strips and fry until crisp. Remove and chop finely.

  2. Fry the sliced onion in the fat left in the frying pan until browned, then add to the pot with the chickens.

  3. Add the chopped salt pork, allspice, and cloves. Stew slowly for at least 1 hour until the meat is tender.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the chicken pieces and keep warm in a hot dish.

  2. To the pot, add the catsup, browned flour, chopped parsley, and sherry. Boil once.

  3. Strain the gravy through a colander to remove bits of pork and onion, then return it to the pot with the chicken.

  4. Bring to a final boil and serve, pouring the gravy over the 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Allspice + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Young chickens
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during slow stewing.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and flavor to the stew and the frying fat for the onion.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma when browned before stewing.
Brown sherry
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew slowly for at least 1 hour. Low, gentle heat lets the connective tissue in the chicken break down slowly, so the meat becomes tender instead of tough. A hard boil toughens meat and can make the gravy cloudy or greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pork, allspice, clove, walnut, flour, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pork, allspice, clove, walnut, 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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