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A Fricassee of Chickens

A stew of chicken pieces simmered in a white sauce with butter, cream, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

A Fricassee of Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut up the chickens neatly and remove the thigh bones from the legs.

  2. Place the chickens in a stewpan with cold water and bring to a boil.

  3. Once boiling, remove from heat and transfer to cold water.

Make the stock

  1. In another stewpan, combine the trimmings, lean ham, onions, bouquet garni, and mace with ½ pint of water.

  2. Boil for 1 hour, then strain the liquid and add it to the chickens with 2 ounces of butter.

  3. Let it simmer on the stove for about 30 minutes.

Make the sauce and finish

  1. In a separate stewpan, melt a bit of butter, then add a little flour and the chicken stock.

  2. Stir in enough cream to achieve a good white sauce.

  3. If desired, thicken with a liaison of 3 eggs.

  4. Add a few drops of garlic vinegar, the juice of ½ lemon, and a little sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Chickens
Provide the meat that becomes the dish, cooked gently until tender in the stock.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the stock and forms the base of the white sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth white sauce by gelatinising in the liquid.
Cream
Enriches the sauce, adding body and a smooth, mellow texture.
Eggs
Optional liaison that thickens and enriches the sauce when gently heated.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the sauce. If hot liquid is poured into eggs quickly or the sauce boils after adding them, the eggs can scramble. Tempering the eggs with warm liquid first and keeping the heat low lets them thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, onion, clove, butter, flour, cream. 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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