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Fricassee of Chickens

A French-style chicken stew with butter, flour, cream, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. Dry the chicken pieces well.

  2. Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper.

  3. Melt the butter in a deep frying pan over medium heat.

  4. Fry the chicken pieces until golden brown on both sides.

  5. Add boiling water, flour, salt, and pepper.

  6. Cover tightly.

  7. Simmer over low heat for 10-15 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Combine chicken, water, onion, mace, salt, and pepper in a saucepan.

  2. Boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove chicken.

  4. Strain the gravy into a bowl.

Finish and serve

  1. Melt butter in the saucepan.

  2. Add flour. Mix well.

  3. Return chicken to the saucepan. Stir until hot.

  4. Add gravy, cream, and beaten eggs.

  5. Stir until just about to boil.

  6. Serve hot, garnished with parsley.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Butter
Browns the chicken and enriches the gravy with richness and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished sauce.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce gently when stirred in without boiling.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and sweetness to the gravy as it simmers.

The step that matters

Stir in the eggs without boiling. Egg proteins set and curdle when overheated, so the sauce must be held just below boiling after the beaten eggs and cream go in. Boiling it can make the gravy grainy and split.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, pepper, onion, cream, 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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