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Fricassee of Chicken or Veal

A stew of chicken or veal simmered in stock with lemon, herbs, mace, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chicken or Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken into nice pieces.

  2. Put the chicken into the stock and add the lemon juice, herbs, and mace.

  3. Simmer gently until tender.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir the egg yolks with the cream, then remove the mace and herbs and strain the mixture in.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  3. Cook for one minute longer.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 main protein and body of the dish, becoming tender as it simmers.
Stock
Forms the moist cooking liquid that gently cooks the chicken and becomes the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they gently heat and add richness and a smooth texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture, softening the sauce's flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the cream and yolks.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolks into the sauce gently. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat, as their proteins set slowly. If the mixture gets too hot or boils, the yolks scramble and the sauce turns grainy, so keep the heat low and strain the mixture in.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, lemon, cream, egg, pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, lemon, cream, egg, pepper. 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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