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Fricassee Sauce

A sauce of beaten eggs and white sauce, finished with lemon juice, used to coat fricassee meat or chicken.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Fricassee Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Stir in the white sauce gradually.

  3. Return the mixture to a saucepan and heat gently, avoiding boiling.

  4. Just before serving, stir in the lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Lift the fricasseed meat or chicken from the saucepan and drain on a slice.

  2. Place the meat or chicken in a hot dish before adding the sauce.

  3. Pour the sauce over the meat or chicken when the eggs are just set.

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. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Sauce + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Egg + saucetop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,895 recipes

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they set when gently heated, giving it body and a smooth, rich texture.
Common english white sauce
Forms the creamy base that the beaten eggs enrich and thicken.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Heat gently, avoiding boiling. Egg proteins set with heat, so if the mixture boils it can curdle and turn grainy. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and lets the eggs thicken it evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sauce):

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Pumpkinfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sauce. 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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