Skip to main content
Main

Fricassee of Chicken

A stew of chicken pieces cooked in bacon fat, wine, and spices, thickened with brown roux and finished with lemon and mutton juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chervil and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 266 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. In a stew pan, heat bacon fat and add the chicken pieces.

  2. Pour in the white wine and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add lard or butter, nutmeg, parsley, chervil or celery, and whole shallots.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove shallots before serving.

  2. Thicken the mixture with brown roux.

  3. Stir in lemon juice and mutton juice.

  4. Place the chicken on a dish and pour the sauce over it before serving.

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. Chervil + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together774 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish and gives the stew its meat and savour.
Brown roux
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce that clings to the chicken.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the cooking liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds brightness and acidity that balances the rich sauce.
Mutton juice
Adds savoury meaty flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with brown roux. Roux must be stirred in gradually and cooked through in the simmering liquid so it dissolves without lumps and thickens evenly. Adding it too quickly or to a boiling liquid can form clumps, leaving the sauce uneven in texture.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, white wine, pepper, butter, parsley, chervil, shallot):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, white wine, pepper, butter, parsley, chervil, shallot. 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.

More chicken fricassee recipes

with Mushrooms 6White 6Cold 4with Tomato Sauce 3 See all 369 →

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipes