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Fricassee of Chickens

A stew of boiled chicken pieces simmered with onion, mace, lemon peel, white pepper, sweet herbs, and finished with a cream and egg yolk sauce.

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 ↓

Fricassee of Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chickens in a small quantity of water until cooked through.

  2. Let the chickens cool, then cut them into pieces.

Make the fricassee

  1. Simmer the chicken pieces in a little gravy made from the boiling liquid, along with onion, mace, lemon peel, white pepper, and sweet herbs.

  2. Keep the chicken hot while you prepare the sauce.

  3. Strain the cooking liquid back into a saucepan, add salt, nutmeg, flour, and butter, and bring to a boil.

  4. Beat the egg yolk and mix it with the cream, then stir it into the sauce.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce and adds richness when stirred in with the cream.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce, helping it feel smooth.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolk and cream into the sauce. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble if the sauce is too hot when it is added. Adding it gradually off the heat, or with the sauce only just warm, helps it blend into a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, mace, lemon, nutmeg, flour, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, mace, lemon, nutmeg, flour, butter. 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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