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Fricasseed Fowl

A fowl fricassée cooked with herbs, spices, stock, flour, cream, and egg yolks.

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

Fricasseed Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Wash the fowl pieces and place them in a covered stew-pan.

  2. Pour boiling water over the fowl and season with salt, parsley, thyme, cloves, and mace.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes, then strain through a sieve.

Make the fricassée

  1. Trim the fowl pieces and return them to the stew-pan with stock and flour.

  2. Boil for a few minutes, then add cream mixed with beaten egg yolks.

  3. Stir quickly over the heat, but do not let it boil again.

Serve

  1. Serve in a pyramidal form on a hot dish, pouring the broth over the fowl.

  2. If reheating, do so in a covered basin set in boiling water to prevent curdling.

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. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  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. Thyme + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,349 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the meat and, through simmering, the flavoured broth for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a light sauce that clings to the fowl.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce when gently heated, giving it a smooth, silky body.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sauce's texture and flavour.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Stir quickly over the heat, but do not let it boil again. Egg yolks scramble and curdle when they get too hot, so the sauce must stay below boiling to stay smooth and thick.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, thyme, clove, flour, cream, egg, wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, thyme, clove, flour, cream, egg, wine. 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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