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Fricassee Chicken

A French stew of chicken simmered with vegetables, finished in a butter and egg yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fricassee Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a large pot, combine chicken pieces, onions, carrot, celery, parsley, and enough water to cover.

  2. Bring to a boil and then simmer until the chicken is tender.

  3. Remove the chicken and strain the broth.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the strained broth with butter and heat until thickened.

  2. Beat in the egg yolks and add chopped parsley.

  3. Return the chicken to the sauce, season with salt and pepper, and 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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 is cooked tender in the broth and served in the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness when beaten into the warm broth.
Butter
Adds fat and smooth richness to the broth as it heats and thickens.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and flavor to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Beat in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the broth is too hot when they go in, they can scramble into lumps instead of forming a smooth, creamy sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, celery, parsley, butter, egg, pepper. 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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