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Fricassee of Chickens, a LA St. Lambert

A French-style chicken fricassee simmered with ham, vegetables, wine, and broth, finished with a flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chickens, a LA St. Lambert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine carrot, onion, celery, ham, butter, bay leaf, thyme, cloves, mace, and peppercorns in a stewpan.

  2. Cook over low heat for 10 minutes without browning.

  3. Add white wine and broth.

  4. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  5. Strain mixture into a basin.

Cook the chicken

  1. In a clean stewpan, melt butter.

  2. Add chicken pieces.

  3. Cook until firm to the touch but not browned.

  4. Sprinkle flour and stir to coat chicken.

  5. Add strained liquid and simmer until chicken is cooked 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the vegetables soften without browning.
French white wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the savoury liquid.
Flour
Coats the chicken and thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce.
Chickens
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender as it cooks gently in the liquid.
Raw ham
Adds salty, savoury depth to the stock as it cooks with the aromatics.

The step that matters

Cook the chicken without browning. Keeping the chicken pale and only just firm preserves the white, delicate colour and flavour typical of a fricassee. Browning would change it into a different dish, and gentle heat keeps the meat tender rather than tough.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, celery, ham, butter, thyme, clove):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, celery, ham, butter, thyme, clove. 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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