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Fricassee of Chicken

A stew of chicken simmered in a milk-based sauce thickened with butter and flour, flavored with parsley, onion, pepper, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken pieces in water until cooked through.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine milk, parsley, onion, and pepper in a separate pot.

  2. Boil the mixture and then strain it.

  3. Return the strained milk to the pot and keep it on the fire.

  4. In a bowl, mix butter and flour until smooth, then stir into the milk.

  5. Boil the mixture until it thickens to the consistency of soft custard.

  6. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl, then gradually pour in the milk mixture while stirring constantly.

  7. Add the sherry wine and mix well, but do not boil after adding the eggs and wine.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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 body of the dish, cooked through in water.
Milk
Forms the base of the creamy sauce that coats the chicken.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and with flour helps thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a custard-like texture.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat. If the sauce boils after they go in, they can curdle and turn grainy, so the mixture must be stirred constantly and kept below boiling.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, milk, butter, flour, egg, sherry, wine):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, milk, butter, flour, egg, sherry, 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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