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Fricasseed Chicilens

Chicken joints stewed in a white sauce made from strained gravy, finished with cream and beaten egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fricasseed Chicilens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Choose fat, plump chickens.

  2. Draw, singe, and wash the chickens.

  3. Skin and cut the chickens into joints.

  4. Blanch the joints in boiling water for 2-3 minutes.

  5. Immerse the joints in cold water to whiten them.

Make the gravy

  1. In a stewpan, combine trimmings, necks, legs, parsley, onions, clove, mace, shallot, bay leaf, salt, and pepper.

  2. Pour in the blanching water and simmer for over 1 hour.

Stew and finish the sauce

  1. In another stewpan, melt the butter and add the chicken joints.

  2. Dredge the joints with flour and heat without browning.

  3. Moisten the chicken with the strained gravy from the trimmings.

  4. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

  5. Transfer the chicken to another stewpan.

  6. Skim the sauce and reduce it by boiling quickly.

  7. Strain the sauce over the chicken, add cream, and season with mace and cayenne.

  8. Bring to a boil.

  9. Just before serving, stir in the beaten yolks of 3 eggs.

  10. Keep the sauce hot but not boiling to prevent curdling.

  11. Optionally, add a few stewed button mushrooms for improvement.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and enrich it as they set gently with heat.
Butter
Carries the chicken joints in the pan and adds richness to the finished sauce.
Flour (in the method)
Dredged onto the joints to help thicken the sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce hot but not boiling. Once egg yolks are stirred in, boiling can make them scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth and thick.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, parsley, onion, clove, mace, shallot):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, parsley, onion, clove, mace, shallot. 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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