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Poulet En Fricassee — Chicken Fricassee

A French chicken fricassee made with a roux-based sauce, egg yolks, cream, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Poulet En Fricassee — Chicken Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken into pieces and steep in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Drain the chicken and place it in a pan with 1 quart of water.

  3. Bring to a boil, skim, and add salt, onion, carrot, celery, parsley, and bay leaf.

  4. Simmer for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In the meantime, prepare a roux with flour and butter, cooking for 5 minutes without browning.

  2. Moisten the roux with the strained broth from the chicken and simmer the sauce for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Bind the sauce with egg yolks and cream, ensuring it does not boil.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Add the chicken pieces, heat well, and serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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, as it simmers, flavors the broth used for the sauce.
Flour
Forms the roux that thickens the broth into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Butter
Enriches the roux with fat and carries flavor through the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat, giving it a velvety texture.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the sauce's texture.

The step that matters

Binding the sauce with egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks thicken by coagulating proteins under gentle heat. If the sauce boils, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth, velvety sauce.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, carrot, celery, parsley, flour, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, carrot, celery, parsley, flour, 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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