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Fricassee of Chickens

A stew of chicken simmered with veal or mutton, onion, mace, lemon peel, herbs, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Fricassee of Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chickens in a small quantity of water until tender.

  2. Let them cool, then cut them up.

  3. Simmer the chicken pieces in the broth with veal or mutton, onion, mace, lemon peel, white pepper, and sweet herbs.

  4. Strain the broth and return it to the saucepan.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Add salt, nutmeg, flour, and butter; bring to a boil.

  2. Beat the yolk of an egg and mix with cream; stir over low heat without boiling.

  3. Serve the chicken with the sauce, adding mushrooms if desired.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the broth into a sauce as it heats with the butter.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a smooth body.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the cream sauce as it gently sets when heated.
Cream
Adds richness and softness, giving the sauce a smooth, mellow texture.

The step that matters

Heat the egg and cream gently. Egg yolk thickens when warmed but curdles if it boils, so the cream mixture should be stirred over low heat and never allowed to boil.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, mace, lemon, nutmeg, flour, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, mace, lemon, nutmeg, 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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