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Fricassée À LA Sauce Blanche

A French chicken fricassée cooked in a white sauce of flour, water, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 À LA Sauce Blanche

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare and brown

  1. Coat the chicken pieces with flour.

  2. In a skillet, brown the chicken with salt, pepper, onion, and parsley.

Simmer and finish

  1. Once browned, add 2 cups of water and boil for 45 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and cream together.

  3. Stir the egg and cream mixture into the skillet just before removing from heat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Coats the chicken, helping it brown and thickening the sauce slightly.
Chicken
Provides the main protein and the meaty flavor of the dish.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a rich, smooth texture when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce's flavor and texture.

The step that matters

Stir the egg and cream mixture in just before removing from heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the mixture boils after being added, the proteins can scramble, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, pepper, parsley, egg, cream. 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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