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Nice Fricassee Chicken

A chicken fricassee made with butter, flour, cream, eggs, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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. Combine chicken pieces, water, onion, mace, pepper, and salt in a saucepan.

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

  3. Remove the chicken.

  4. Strain the broth into a bowl.

Make the sauce and finish

  1. Melt butter in the saucepan.

  2. Whisk in flour until smooth.

  3. Add the chicken pieces back to the saucepan.

  4. Stir until heated through.

  5. Pour in the strained broth, cream, beaten eggs, and parsley.

  6. Stir until almost boiling.

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 flavour that the broth and sauce carry.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid when cooked with butter.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat, adding body and richness.

The step that matters

Stir until almost boiling. Once the beaten eggs go in, the sauce must be heated gently and not boiled. High heat can scramble the eggs, leaving the sauce grainy and curdled instead of smooth and thick.

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.

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