Skip to main content
Main

Csickisn Fricassee

A creamy chicken dish simmered in stock, thickened with butter and flour, finished with egg and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Csickisn Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken into serving pieces.

  2. Cover with boiling water.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of salt and ½ teaspoon of white pepper.

  4. Simmer for 1 hour or until tender, skimming as needed.

  5. Remove the chicken.

  6. Boil the liquid down to 1 pint.

  7. Strain the liquid.

  8. Remove the fat.

  9. Add 1 cup of cream or milk.

  10. Heat again.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of flour and mix well.

  3. Slowly pour in the hot cream and liquid, stirring continuously.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, ½ teaspoon of celery salt, and 1 teaspoon of lemon juice.

  5. Beat the egg.

  6. Mix in a little of the hot liquid to temper it.

  7. Combine with the sauce.

Finish

  1. For a white fricassee, return the chicken to the sauce and heat through.

  2. For a brown fricassee, brown the chicken in butter and pour the sauce over it.

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. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Egg
Enriches and thickens the sauce when tempered into the hot liquid.
Cream or rich milk
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a creamy texture.
Butter
Provides fat for the roux and flavour, and browns the chicken for the brown version.

The step that matters

Tempering the egg. Adding hot liquid to the beaten egg slowly raises its temperature gently. Pouring it in all at once would scramble the egg and leave lumps in the sauce instead of a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, butter, celery, flour, lemon, cream):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, butter, celery, flour, lemon, cream. 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

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes