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Fricassee of Chicken a LA Reine

A French-style chicken fricassee with a creamy sauce of butter, flour, gravy, eggs, milk, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chicken a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Place the jointed chickens in a large saucepan with 1 quart of cold water.

  2. Bring the mixture to a slow boil.

  3. Add celery, parsley, bay leaf, onion, salt, and pepper to the pot.

  4. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

  5. Test the chicken with a fork to check doneness.

  6. Remove the chicken from the gravy and keep it warm over hot water.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate saucepan, cook butter and flour together until bubbling, without browning.

  2. Slowly add the strained chicken gravy to the butter‑flour mixture, stirring constantly, and let it boil for 2 minutes.

  3. In a bowl, mix egg yolks, milk, melted butter, and red pepper.

  4. Carefully add the egg mixture to the hot sauce, stirring continuously without boiling.

  5. Add lemon juice to the sauce.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the chicken and serve immediately.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the meat that is poached and then served in the sauce.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce.
Chicken gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the chicken flavor.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and thicken it gently when heated.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the richness of the egg yolk mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the hot sauce. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but scramble if the sauce boils. Adding them slowly while stirring constantly, and keeping the sauce below a boil, keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, celery, parsley, pepper, butter, flour, egg):

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

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