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Chicken Fricassee

A stew of chicken, ham, shallots, mace, water, cream, and butter‑flour mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Chicken Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lay the cut-up chickens, ham, shallots, and mace in a skillet.

  2. Season the chickens with pepper and salt, then add water.

Cook and thicken

  1. Cook until the chickens are about half done.

  2. Stir in the cream and the butter rolled in flour.

  3. Keep stirring the fricassee until fully cooked.

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. Shallot + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main meat that becomes tender as it simmers in the skillet.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the chicken.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the sauce.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Keep stirring the fricassee until fully cooked. Once the flour-thickened butter and cream go in, the sauce can scorch on the bottom or turn lumpy if it is not stirred. Constant stirring keeps the flour dispersed and the sauce smooth as it thickens.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, shallot, pepper, cream, walnut, butter):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, shallot, pepper, cream, walnut, butter. 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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