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A Yellow Fricassee

A stew of chicken, bacon, onion, and spices thickened with egg yolks and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Yellow Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the chicken

  1. Combine the chicken, bacon, onion, cloves, nutmeg, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the water, cover, and steam for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  3. Remove the chicken from the saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the egg yolks, lemon juice, vinegar, and cream in a bowl until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture over the chicken, ensuring the gravy is thick like custard.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow covered steaming.
Egg yolks
Thicken the gravy into a custard-like sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, helping the yolks form a smooth, silky sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the chicken as it starts to cook.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the yolks.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture over the chicken, ensuring the gravy is thick like custard.. Egg yolks thicken only within a narrow temperature range. If the sauce is heated too quickly or too much, the yolks can scramble and curdle instead of becoming smooth and thick.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, clove, nutmeg, butter, egg, lemon, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, clove, nutmeg, butter, egg, lemon, vinegar. 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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