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A Yellow Fricassee

A yellow chicken fricassee made with chicken, bacon, onions, cloves, nutmeg, butter, water, egg yolks, lemon juice, vinegar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Yellow Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the chicken

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chicken, bacon, onions, cloves, nutmeg, and butter.

  2. Add the water, cover, and steam for 1½ to 2 hours.

  3. Remove the chicken from the saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks, lemon juice, vinegar, and cream until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture over the chicken; the gravy should be thick like custard.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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 the meat that is cooked slowly in steam until tender.
Egg yolks
Thicken the gravy into a custard-like texture as they set with gentle heat.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce and carrying the egg yolks smoothly.
Onions
Release sweetness and flavour into the braising liquid as they soften.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping flavour carry through the chicken as it cooks.

The step that matters

Pour the egg mixture over the chicken. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can curdle or scramble if the heat is too high. The gravy should thicken like custard, so keep the heat low and the sauce moving gently.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, clove, nutmeg, butter, egg, lemon, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, clove, nutmeg, butter, egg, lemon, vinegar. 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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