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Chicken Fricassee

A dish of chicken joints simmered in a sauce of butter, flour, broth, cream, lemon, mace, pepper, and sea salt, served with sautéed mushrooms.

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 ↓

Chicken Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the skin from the chicken and cut it into neat joints.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix 1 ounce of butter with 1 ounce of flour over medium heat.

  2. Gradually add the chicken broth, then stir in the cream and a little lemon juice.

  3. Cook the sauce over medium heat for 5 minutes, then pour it over the chicken in another saucepan.

  4. Heat the chicken through.

Plate and serve

  1. Arrange the chicken joints in a circle on a serving dish.

  2. Remove the mace and cover the chicken with the sauce.

  3. In another pan, heat the mushrooms with a little lemon juice and ½ ounce of butter until hot.

  4. Place the mushrooms in the center of the circle of chicken.

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

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

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 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. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Forms the roux with flour, giving the sauce richness and a smooth, rich body.
Flour
Combined with butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it cooks.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, softening its flavor and texture.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and a tender texture to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce after adding the cream. Flour needs sustained heat to lose its raw taste and thicken the liquid. Cream added to a boiling sauce can split, so the heat should be kept steady and gentle.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, butter, flour, cream, lemon, 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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