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Chicken Fricasee

A chicken stew with butter, herbs, cloves, broth, and finished with egg yolks and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Chicken Fricasee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fricassee

  1. In a stewpan, combine the chicken pieces, livers, gizzards, butter, parsley, bay leaf, thyme, and cloves.

  2. Place the stewpan over medium heat and moisten with broth or water.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper, then cook until the sauce thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in the egg yolks and lemon juice.

  2. For added flavor, include truffles, small mushrooms, crawfish tails, veal sweetbreads, or capers as 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat that becomes tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a smooth, creamy body when stirred in at the end.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the egg yolks.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks and lemon juice. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently; if the sauce is too hot or boils after they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Stirring them in just before serving, off strong heat, keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Clovethe original

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