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Fricassee of Chicken

A creamy chicken stew made with a sauce of butter, flour, milk, and stock, served over fried croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin from the chicken joints.

  2. In a pan, combine the bones, skin, water, milk, onion, carrot, peppercorns, herbs, and lemon rind; simmer for 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. In another pan, melt the butter, add the flour, and cook well.

  2. Strain the stock into the butter and flour mixture, season, and cook until thickened.

  3. Add the chicken joints to the sauce and heat through.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken on fried croutons, pour the sauce over, and garnish with croutons of fried bread and parsley.

  2. Stir in the cream and lemon juice just before serving.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Main protein, gently reheated in the sauce so it stays moist.
Butter
Fat that forms the roux with flour, adding richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when cooked with butter and liquid.
Chicken stock
Savoury liquid that becomes the body of the sauce.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the flavourful liquid simmered for the stock.
Cream
Stirred in at the end to add richness and a smooth, velvety texture.

The step that matters

Adding the stock to the butter and flour mixture. Flour must be cooked in the butter first, then the liquid added gradually and stirred while it heats. Starch granules swell and thicken the sauce only when hot, and adding liquid too fast or unevenly can leave lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

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