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Fricassee of Chickens

A stew of chicken stuffed with a forcemeat of veal, ham, bacon, and herbs, finished with cream and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 of Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Bone, singe, and wash the fowl.

  2. Make a forcemeat by mixing veal, ham, bacon, egg yolks, herbs, suet, lemon peel, salt, pepper, cayenne, breadcrumbs, and eggs.

  3. Stuff the fowl with the forcemeat and tie the neck and rump closed.

Stew and finish

  1. Stew the fowl in white gravy until tender.

  2. Add cream, butter, and flour.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Serve with a squeeze of lemon.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Ham + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the forcemeat and help it set firm when cooked inside the fowl.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and give the forcemeat body so it stays tender rather than dense.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the gravy, mellowing its texture.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the fowl instead of running thin.
Beef suet
Adds fat to the forcemeat, keeping it moist and rich during cooking.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil after adding cream and flour. Flour needs to be heated fully to thicken the sauce, but cream can split or curdle if it boils too hard. Keep the heat controlled so the gravy becomes smooth and thick.

“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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