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Fowl, Fricasseed

A fricassee made from cold roast fowl, lemon peel, mace, herbs, onion, and cream, thickened with flour and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Fowl, Fricasseed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the fowl into nice joints.

Make the gravy

  1. Make gravy from the trimmings and legs by stewing them with lemon peel, mace, herbs, onion, seasoning, and water until reduced to ½ pint.

  2. Strain the gravy and add the fowl.

Finish the sauce

  1. Warm the fowl through and thicken the sauce with flour.

  2. Stir the egg yolks into the cream and add to the sauce, heating thoroughly without boiling.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mace + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the cream sauce as they gently set with heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so the sauce clings to the fowl.
Onion
Adds savory depth to the stock used for the gravy.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolks into the cream and add to the sauce, heating thoroughly without boiling.. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but curdle and turn grainy if the sauce boils, so keep the heat moderate and stir constantly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, onion, pepper, flour, cream, egg. 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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