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Fricassee of Chicken

A dish of chicken pieces stewed in butter and stock, finished with egg yolks, cream and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the chicken pieces in cold water for 1-2 hours to whiten the flesh, then remove and pat dry.

Make the fricassee

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan, add the chicken pieces, and sprinkle with flour.

  2. Moisten with chicken stock, then add salt, pepper, sweet herbs, bay leaf, cloves, mushrooms, and onions.

  3. Stew slowly until the chicken is cooked through.

Finish and serve

  1. To serve, mix the egg yolks, cream, and lemon juice, then add to the stewpan without boiling.

  2. Garnish with sippets of bread, cockscombs, or crayfish.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Marjoram + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it stews slowly in liquid.
Flour
Dusted on the chicken in the butter, it thickens the sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Fat that cooks the chicken and carries flavour into the sauce.
Egg yolks
Mixed with cream and added off the heat, they enrich and thicken the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream mixture. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and curdle if boiled. Adding the mixture off the boil, without letting it boil, keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, flour, pepper, parsley, thyme, marjoram):

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, pepper, parsley, thyme, marjoram. 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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