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Fricassee Chickens

A stew of chicken pieces simmered in a sauce of butter, wine, herbs, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fricassee Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Wash the chicken pieces in warm water and dry them with a cloth.

  2. Season the chicken with salt and pepper.

  3. In a stew pan, melt the butter and add the chicken pieces.

Stew and make the gravy

  1. Add a little water, lemon pickle or lemon, white wine, anchovy, mace, nutmeg, onion, thyme, and marjoram.

  2. Stew until the chicken is tender.

  3. Remove the chicken and place it on a dish.

  4. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter, then strain it.

  5. Beat the egg yolks and mix with the cream, then add to the gravy.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the gravy gently without boiling, then pour it over the chicken.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 through slow stewing in liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the chicken and helps thicken the gravy with flour.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the chicken rather than running off.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the gravy, giving it a smooth, velvety body when heated gently.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy, softening its flavour.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the stewed chicken and gravy.

The step that matters

Heat the gravy gently without boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the gravy boils, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, butter, lemon, white wine, anchovy, nutmeg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, butter, lemon, white wine, anchovy, nutmeg. 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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