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To Fricassee Chickens White

A fricassee of white chicken pieces simmered in clear stock with lemon, mace, herbs, and finished with cream and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Fricassee Chickens White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Wash, dry, and season the chicken parts with mixed spices, using only white pepper.

Stew

  1. In a pot, combine the gravy, lemon peel, onions, mace, and sweet herbs.

  2. Add the chicken parts and stew slowly for 30 minutes, keeping the pot covered.

Finish the sauce

  1. Strain the sauce and thicken it with white roux or butter rolled in flour, adding salt and nutmeg.

  2. Before serving, stir in the hot cream and beaten egg yolks, ensuring it does not boil.

  3. Optionally, add white wine and lemon juice to the fricassee.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat that is slowly stewed until tender in the gravy.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the cream sauce as they gently set when heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
White roux
Thickens the strained sauce so it coats the chicken.
Veal or mutton gravy
Forms the flavourful clear liquid base in which the chicken stews.

The step that matters

Stirring in the hot cream and egg yolks. If the sauce boils after the egg yolks go in, the proteins in the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy. Keeping it below a boil lets the yolks thicken it smoothly.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, veal, onion, mace, nutmeg, cream, egg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Pumpkinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, onion, mace, nutmeg, cream, egg. 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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