Skip to main content
Main

Fricassee of Chickens

A French-style chicken stew with cream, egg yolks, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Place chicken pieces, gizzard, and liver in a stewpan and cover with warm water.

  2. Add salt, pepper, cloves, and mace.

  3. Boil until tender, then remove the chicken.

  4. Strain the broth.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a pan and add flour to thicken.

  2. Stir in the strained broth and chopped onions.

  3. Simmer the mixture with the chicken for 20 minutes, skimming as needed.

  4. In a bowl, mix cream with egg yolks, then stir the cream mixture into the broth.

  5. Heat without boiling.

Serve

  1. Arrange chicken on a serving dish.

  2. Pour the hot sauce over the chicken.

  3. Serve.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavour while it is cooked into a roux base.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the cream sauce, giving it a smooth, rich body when heated gently.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.
Chicken
Provides the main protein and flavour, which is released into the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Heat without boiling. Once the egg yolks are added, boiling can curdle the sauce, causing it to turn grainy. Heating gently keeps it smooth and thick.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, liver, pepper, clove, butter, flour, onion):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, liver, pepper, clove, butter, flour, onion. 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.

More chicken fricassee recipes

with Mushrooms 6White 6Cold 4with Tomato Sauce 3 See all 369 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes