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Fricasseed Chicken

A stew of chicken pieces simmered with onion, herbs, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Fricasseed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour cold water over the chicken pieces in a pot.

  2. Add grated onion, thyme, sweet marjoram, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cover and simmer slowly until the chicken is tender.

  4. In a bowl, mix flour with butter until smooth.

  5. Stir the flour mixture into the pot and add mace and cayenne if desired.

  6. Simmer until the flour is cooked, then stir in the cream.

  7. When simmering, add the beaten egg yolks and serve immediately.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce when gently heated, adding richness and body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the flour blend smoothly into the sauce.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by coagulating with gentle heat. If the sauce boils after they go in, they can curdle and turn grainy, so keep it at a bare simmer and stir constantly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, thyme, marjoram, pepper, flour, butter, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, thyme, marjoram, pepper, flour, butter, egg. 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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