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Fricassee of Chickens with Mushrooms

A French-style chicken fricassee cooked with mushrooms, butter, parsley, green onions, and finished with eggs and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chickens with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Carve the chickens smoothly with a sharp knife.

  2. Wash the chickens in warm water.

  3. Blanch the chickens for a few minutes to brown the flesh.

  4. Plunge the chickens in cold water.

Stew

  1. Place the chickens in a stew-pan with butter, parsley, green onions, and mushrooms.

  2. Warm the stew through.

  3. Dredge the chickens with flour.

  4. Add salt, white pepper, and the blanching liquor to the stew.

  5. Simmer for 30 minutes or longer if the chickens are large.

Finish the sauce

  1. Lift the chickens into another saucepan.

  2. Skim off the fat from the saucepan.

  3. Reduce the sauce by boiling.

  4. Strain the sauce over the chickens.

  5. Before serving, thicken the sauce with beaten eggs and a little cream.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main meat, which browns during blanching and becomes tender through simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the stew.
Flour
Dusted on the chicken to thicken the sauce as it cooks.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and texture to the stewed sauce.
Eggs
Thicken the finished sauce when beaten in and gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the thickened sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with eggs. Egg proteins set when heated, thickening the sauce. If the sauce is too hot when the beaten eggs go in, they curdle and turn grainy, so add them off the heat or over gentle heat.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, mushroom, parsley, onion, flour, egg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, mushroom, parsley, onion, flour, 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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