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Chicken to Fricassee

A stew of chicken joints simmered in gravy with spices, then finished with a sauce of butter, flour, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken to Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut up the chicken into joints.

  2. Season the chicken with mixed spices and white pepper.

Stew

  1. In a pot, combine gravy or stock, onions, mace, lemon peel, and sweet herbs.

  2. Add the chicken and let it stew gently for 30 minutes, covered.

  3. Remove the chicken and keep it warm over boiling water.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Strain the sauce and thicken it with butter rolled in flour, adding salt and nutmeg.

  2. Gradually stir in heated sweet cream and beaten egg yolks, avoiding boiling.

  3. Pour the sauce over the chicken and garnish with lemon slices.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce with butter when cooked, giving it body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the cream sauce, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the flavour and smoothing the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps thicken the sauce with flour.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in heated sweet cream and beaten egg yolks, avoiding boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat, and if the sauce boils they can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, white pepper, onion, mace, butter, flour, nutmeg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Limefits less well

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