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Fricasseed Chicken

A chicken fricassee made with butter, flour, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Fricasseed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut up the chickens into neat joints.

  2. Sprinkle the pieces with salt, cayenne pepper, mace, and nutmeg.

  3. Place the chickens skin side down in a kettle with cold water. Add the sliced onion. Cover the pot.

  4. Simmer until cooked through.

  5. Remove the chickens and keep them warm on a platter.

Make the cream gravy

  1. In the kettle, rub flour into butter until smooth. Add a few drops of broth. Let the mixture soften and remove lumps.

  2. Stir the smooth mixture into the gravy. Boil for 2-3 minutes while stirring constantly.

  3. Pour in the cream. Bring to a boil.

  4. Beat the egg yolks until light. When the cream gravy boils, pour it over the beaten yolks. Return the mixture to the kettle.

  5. Heat thoroughly without boiling.

Serve

  1. Pour the gravy over the hot chickens. Serve immediately.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main body of the dish, becoming tender as they simmer in water.
Flour
Thickens the gravy, giving it body when cooked with butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps the flour blend smoothly into the gravy.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the gravy.
Egg yolks
Enrich and further thicken the gravy, giving it a silky texture.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling gravy over the beaten yolks. Egg yolks scramble if they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Adding the hot gravy gradually while whisking and then heating without boiling lets the yolks thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, nutmeg, onion, flour, butter, 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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