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To Fricassee Chickens White

A chicken fricassee cooked in a 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) · 14 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

  1. Wash, dry, and flatten the chicken parts, then season with white pepper.

Stew

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

  2. Stew the chicken in the mixture slowly for 30 minutes, keeping the pot covered.

  3. Strain the sauce and thicken it with butter and flour, adding salt and nutmeg.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, stir in the hot cream and beaten egg yolks carefully to avoid curdling.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 becomes tender during slow stewing in the gravy.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream into a smooth, rich sauce when heated gently.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the strained sauce together with butter, giving it body.
Butter
Combines with flour to form a roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Gravy
Forms the savoury liquid base that flavours and moistens the stewed chicken.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and egg yolks. Egg yolks curdle if they get too hot or are added to a boiling liquid. Stirring in the hot cream and yolks gently, off the heat, keeps the sauce smooth and thick.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, onion, mace, butter, flour, 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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