Skip to main content
Main

Nice Fricassee Chicken

A creamy chicken stew with butter, flour, cream, eggs, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Nice Fricassee Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chicken pieces, water, onion, mace, pepper, and salt.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove the chicken and strain the broth into a bowl.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt the butter in the saucepan, then stir in the flour.

  2. Add the chicken pieces back to the saucepan and heat through.

  3. Stir in the strained broth, cream, beaten eggs, and parsley.

  4. Cook until the mixture is hot and almost boiling, then 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Chicken
Provides the main protein and body, and releases flavor into the broth as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor when melted with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and broth into a smooth base for the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce gently and add richness when heated.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten eggs. Eggs can curdle or scramble if the sauce is boiled after they go in. Keep the mixture hot but below a rolling boil so it thickens smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

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