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Fricassee of Chickens a LA Havelock

A French-style chicken fricassee with stock, butter, flour, egg yolks, cream, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chickens a LA Havelock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Draw and singe the chickens.

  2. Remove the legs and wings.

  3. Slit the skin of the breast.

  4. Remove the fillets with the pinion-bone left on.

  5. Trim each fillet.

  6. Lard them.

  7. Place them in a buttered small sauté pan with a little stock.

  8. Decorate the fillets with tongue.

  9. Arrange them in a ring.

  10. Set them in clarified butter in another sauté pan.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine the legs, wings, back-bones, onion, carrot, celery, parsley, mace, peppercorns, and salt.

  2. Moisten with 1 quart of stock.

  3. Boil gently for 20 minutes.

  4. Strain the stock into a stewpan with 2 ounces of butter and 2 ounces of flour kneaded together.

  5. Add mushroom peelings.

  6. Stir the sauce over the fire.

  7. Boil for 20 minutes.

  8. Add the egg yolks, cream, nutmeg, lemon juice, and sugar to the sauce.

  9. Stir gently to set the yolks without boiling.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the sauce over the chicken pieces in a small stewpan.

  2. Add button mushrooms, truffles, and cocks' combs.

  3. Warm the fricassee gently before serving.

  4. Arrange the chicken pieces neatly on a dish.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat and the bones and legs that flavour the stock for the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, with flour, forms a roux that thickens it.
Flour
Combined with butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce when gently heated, giving it body and smoothness.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying flavour from the bones and vegetables.

The step that matters

Stir gently to set the yolks without boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the sauce boils, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy and thin.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, onion, carrot, celery, parsley. 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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