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Blanquette of Chicken

A creamy chicken stew made with butter, flour, stock, and finished with egg yolk and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Blanquette of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a porcelain or granite saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and mix well.

  3. Stir in the stock or water and bring to a boil, stirring continually.

  4. Season with salt and pepper if the chicken is unseasoned.

Cook the chicken

  1. Add the chicken, cover, and simmer gently until tender.

  2. Once cooked, transfer the chicken to a heated meat plate.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the saucepan from the heat and quickly stir in the beaten egg yolk.

  2. Strain the sauce over the chicken and sprinkle with parsley.

  3. Serve immediately, adding onion juice to the sauce if desired.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein and, as it simmers, flavours the surrounding liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour into the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a velvety texture when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat; if the sauce is too hot or the yolk is added carelessly, it can scramble and turn grainy. Removing the pan from the heat first and stirring quickly keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, flour, pepper, egg, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, pepper, egg, parsley. 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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