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Fricassée De Poulets a L Indienne

A chicken fricassée flavored with Indian spices, mushrooms, corn, and pork, simmered in butter, flour, broth, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricassée De Poulets a L Indienne

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fricassée

  1. In a large pan, melt the butter and brown the chicken pieces.

  2. Add the flour and stir well, then pour in the broth and rum.

  3. Season with salt, red pepper, and add the studded onion and herb bouquet.

  4. Stir in the saffron and mushrooms, then cook until the sauce reduces.

Prepare the corn and pork

  1. Prepare the corn by cooking it until tender.

  2. In another pan, fry the pork in lard until nearly cooked, then add the corn.

  3. Cover and cook for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. To serve, plate the chicken fricassée and garnish with mushrooms and blanched green peppers.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Browned first to build flavour, then simmered until tender in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the broth and rum.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the chicken pieces.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the seasonings.
Rum
Adds aromatic depth to the sauce as it reduces.
Pork tenderloin
Adds a second meat that is fried in lard until nearly cooked.

The step that matters

Reducing the sauce after adding saffron and mushrooms. Flour and broth form a thickened sauce only if it simmers long enough to reduce. Cooking too briefly leaves it thin, while overcooking can make it too thick or scorch the bottom of the pan.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, rum, pepper, clove, parsley. 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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