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Fricassee of Chickens, a LA Chevaliere

A French chicken fricassee with butter, mushrooms, truffles, and a sauce of egg yolks, nutmeg, pepper, glaze, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chickens, a LA Chevaliere

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Draw and singe the chicken, then remove the legs and wings.

  2. Slit the skin of the breast, remove the fillets with the pinion bone attached, and trim them.

  3. Lard the fillets and place them in a small sauté pan with butter.

  4. Cut the remaining chicken into pieces and make a fricassee in the usual way.

Make the sauce

  1. Trim the legs and set aside. In a stewpan, combine smaller pieces with mushrooms, cocks' combs, and truffles.

  2. Reduce the mixture by boiling until it thickens to the consistency of Allemande sauce.

  3. Incorporate the egg yolks, nutmeg, pepper, glaze, and lemon juice, stirring over heat for two minutes.

  4. Pass two-thirds of the sauce through a fine sieve onto the fricassee and reserve the rest to mask the legs.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a rich, smooth body when gently heated.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour and helps the fillets brown gently in the pan.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body to the reduced sauce.
Truffles
Contribute a strong, aromatic flavour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the egg yolks.

The step that matters

Incorporating the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the sauce is too hot or boils. Keep the heat low and stir constantly so the sauce turns smooth and silky rather than grainy.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, mushroom, truffle, egg, pepper, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, mushroom, truffle, egg, pepper, lemon. 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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