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Rich White Fricassee

A creamy chicken fricassee made with butter, flour, spices, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Rich White Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until cooked through.

  2. Joint the chicken into pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour, mace, nutmeg, white pepper, and salt.

  3. Add the cream and bring to a boil.

Combine

  1. Add the chicken pieces and heat through.

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds a rich, rounded flavor.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, velvety sauce.
Cream
Forms the body of the sauce and gives it a rich, silky texture.
Chicken
Provides the main protein, which is cooked first and then gently reheated in the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and bringing it to a boil. Flour must be cooked into the melted butter before liquid goes in, or lumps form. Once the cream is added, it should be brought to a boil and kept at a simmer while stirring, since the thickened sauce can scorch on the bottom of the pan and the starch needs to fully thicken.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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