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Chicken Fricassee

Chicken fricassee is a stew of chicken pieces simmered with onion, mace, celery, and seasoned with salt and pepper, finished with egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Place the chicken pieces in a saucepan.

  2. Add the onion, mace, salt, pepper, and celery.

  3. Cover with water and boil slowly until the chicken is tender.

Finish the sauce

  1. Before serving, beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Pour the hot chicken broth into the egg yolks while stirring.

  3. Return the mixture to the chicken in the saucepan, but do not let it boil.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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, as it cooks, flavours the broth.
Egg yolks
Thicken the broth into a smooth, creamy sauce as they gently set with heat.

The step that matters

Returning the egg mixture without boiling. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but curdle if they get too hot or boil. Stirring while adding the hot broth tempers the yolks so they blend in smoothly instead of scrambling.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, pepper, celery, 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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