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Fricassée De Poulets a LA Bourguignonne

A French chicken dish simmered in wine with mushrooms, shallots, tarragon, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Fricassée De Poulets a LA Bourguignonne

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. In a pan, sauté the chicken pieces in butter until cooked through.

  2. Add flour and stir well.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour in the wine and broth, then season with salt and pepper.

  2. Add the bouquet garni and mushrooms, and simmer.

  3. Before serving, mix in the shallots, tarragon, and parsley with the sauce.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

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, which becomes tender and flavourful as it cooks in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce as it combines with the fat and wine.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that balances the richness of the chicken and butter.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a meaty texture to the sauce.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion-like aroma that softens into the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour. Flour must be stirred into the fat and cooked briefly before liquid is added, otherwise it can clump and leave a raw, pasty taste. Cooking it out gives the sauce smooth body.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, wine, pepper, mushroom, shallot, tarragon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, wine, pepper, mushroom, shallot, tarragon. 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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