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Fricassee of Chickens a LA Havelock

A chicken fricassee with stock, butter, flour, mushrooms, and a sauce of egg yolks, cream, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 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 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 and lard each fillet.

  6. Place the fillets in a buttered small sauté pan with a little stock.

Make the stock and sauce

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

  2. Moisten with 1 quart of stock and boil gently for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the stock into a pan with 2 ounces of butter and 2 ounces of flour kneaded together, and add mushroom peelings.

  4. Stir the sauce over heat for 20 minutes.

  5. Add 4 egg yolks, ½ cup cream, nutmeg, lemon juice, and sugar.

  6. Stir without boiling to set the yolks.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the sauce over the chicken pieces in a small stewpan, adding button mushrooms, truffles, and cocks' combs.

  2. Warm the fricassee without boiling.

  3. Arrange the chicken on a dish with the larded fillets on top.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, whose fillets are larded to keep them moist while cooking.
Flour
Kneaded with butter to form a roux that thickens the stock into a sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and, with flour, forms the thickening roux.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the sauce as they set gently over heat, giving it body.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the sauce, softening its flavour.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the flavour of the simmered bones and vegetables.

The step that matters

Stir without boiling to set the yolks. Egg yolks thicken at gentle heat, but boiling makes them scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth and velvety.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Vanillafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, mushroom, egg, cream, nutmeg. 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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