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Nice Fricassee Chicken

A creamy chicken stew with butter, 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: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Nice Fricassee Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Combine chicken pieces, water, onion, mace, pepper, and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove the chicken from the saucepan.

  4. Strain the broth into a bowl.

Make the fricassee sauce

  1. Melt butter in the saucepan. Stir in poultry seasoning.

  2. Add the chicken pieces to the saucepan and heat until hot.

  3. Stir in the strained broth, cream, beaten eggs, and parsley. Heat until just below boiling.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

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 meaty body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries the flavour of the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce gently when heated and add body.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness to the broth as it poaches.

The step that matters

Heat the eggs gently, just below boiling. Beaten eggs stirred into hot liquid can curdle or scramble if overheated. Heating only until just below boiling lets them thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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