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A Fricassee of Chicken

A fricassee of chicken is a stew of chicken pieces simmered in a sauce of gravy thickened with flour, butter, eggs, cream, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

A Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Reserve the white meat and best pieces of chicken for the fricassee; use trimmings for gravy.

  2. Combine chicken trimmings, cold water, garlic, salt, onion, parsley, and pork in a large pot; simmer for 30 minutes.

Cook the chicken

  1. Add reserved chicken pieces to the pot; boil slowly until fully cooked, then remove and keep warm.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Strain the gravy, remove fat, and mix with flour and butter in a saucepan; let it boil.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in egg yolks, cream, and lemon juice; do not boil after adding eggs.

  3. Pour the sauce over the chicken and serve.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Chicken + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,850 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat and the flavorful stock that forms the base of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the strained stock into a smooth gravy as it boils with the butter.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the finished sauce, giving it a silky, creamy body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth texture to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Do not boil after adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks scramble and curdle when overheated, which makes the sauce grainy. Removing the pan from heat before stirring in the yolks, cream, and lemon juice keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, garlic, onion, parsley, pork, flour, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, garlic, onion, parsley, pork, flour, butter. 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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