Skip to main content
Main

To Fricassee a Chicken

A stew of chicken simmered with milk, water, herbs, and finished with a creamy egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Fricassee a Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chicken

  1. Combine the chicken, milk, water, parsley, mace, thyme, lemon peel, and salt in a pot.

  2. Stew the mixture for 1 hour over medium heat.

Finish the sauce

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the sweet cream in a bowl.

  2. Gradually stir the egg and cream mixture into the pot, ensuring it does not boil.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + thymetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat that becomes tender during the long, gentle stew.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a smooth, rich body when gently heated.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the flavor and helping the sauce feel silky.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the stew and adds mild sweetness and body.

The step that matters

Gradually stir the egg and cream mixture into the pot without boiling. Egg yolks begin to set and can curdle or turn grainy if overheated. Adding the mixture slowly and keeping the pot below a boil lets the yolks thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, milk, parsley, thyme, lemon, egg, cream):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, milk, parsley, thyme, lemon, egg, cream. 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.

More chicken fricassee recipes

with Mushrooms 6White 6Cold 4with Tomato Sauce 3 See all 369 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes