Skip to main content
Main

Fricassee of Fowl a LA Francaise

A French chicken stew with a cream sauce, cayenne pepper, and mashed potato garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,756 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-decenal, which smells green, must. The science ↓

Fricassee of Fowl a LA Francaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the cream and reduced sauce in a bowl until well combined.

  2. Add the mixture to the hot sauce.

  3. Stir over low heat until it thickens.

  4. Strain the sauce through a sieve into a bowl.

  5. Stir the strained sauce for 5 minutes.

  6. Season the sauce with cayenne pepper and salt.

  7. Set the seasoned sauce aside in a bain-marie.

Prepare the chicken and potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes.

  2. Mash the boiled potatoes into a paste.

  3. Place the chicken pieces in a stewpan.

  4. Add ½ pint of water to the stewpan.

  5. Heat the stewpan gently to warm the chicken and sauce.

Plate and serve

  1. Arrange three legs of chicken and three pieces of breast on a serving dish.

  2. Form a ball of potato paste about the size of an egg.

  3. Place the potato paste ball in each serving dish.

  4. Arrange the chicken pieces around the potato paste, leaving a slight opening.

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. Chicken + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  2. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Cream + potatotop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and savoury body of the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, thickened texture to the sauce.
Reduced sauce
Concentrates flavour and gives the sauce its body.
Potatoes
Mashed into a paste that forms a starchy base for the plating.

The step that matters

Stirring the cream sauce over low heat. Cream can curdle or split if it boils or overheats, so gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth as it thickens.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, cream, sauce, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, sauce, pepper. 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.

More chicken fricassee recipes

with Mushrooms 6White 6Cold 4with Tomato Sauce 3 See all 369 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes