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Fricassee of Chickens

A stew of chicken pieces, gizzard, and liver simmered in a cream and egg yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Place the chicken pieces, gizzard, and liver in a stewpan and cover with warm water.

  2. Add salt, pepper, cloves, and mace.

  3. Boil until tender.

  4. Remove the chicken pieces and strain the broth.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, melt butter and stir in flour to thicken.

  2. Add the strained broth and chopped onions.

  3. Simmer for 20 minutes, skimming as needed.

  4. In a bowl, mix cream with egg yolks.

  5. Stir the cream mixture into the sauce.

  6. Heat without boiling.

Serve

  1. Arrange the chicken on a serving dish.

  2. Pour 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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 meat, and its cooking broth becomes the base of the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the flour so it can thicken smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the butter and broth into a body-rich sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the cream when gently heated, giving the sauce body.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma to the broth-based sauce.

The step that matters

Heat without boiling. Once egg yolks are stirred into the cream, boiling can scramble them into lumps. Gentle heat lets the yolks thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, liver, pepper, clove, butter, flour, onion):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, liver, pepper, clove, butter, flour, onion. 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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