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Fricassee of Fowl

A fowl stew with onion, parsley, ham, mushrooms, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 234 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fricassee of Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Place the fowl in a jar with sliced onion, parsley, salt, and butter rolled in flour.

  2. Submerge in a kettle of water and cook until three-quarters done.

  3. Skim and strain the liquid, then wipe the fowl dry.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, melt butter and add ham slices, then sprinkle in flour and stir until golden.

  2. Add the reserved liquid, parsley, young onions, bay leaf, clove, sorrel, and mushrooms.

  3. Skim the surface and let it stew until the fowl is fully cooked.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the herbs and thicken the sauce with cream without boiling.

  2. Finish with lemon juice and pour the sauce over the fowl.

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. Parsley + sorreltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + sorreltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Clove + sorreltop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together88 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main meat, which is gently cooked in water and then finished in the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, rolled in flour, helps thicken the cooking liquid and add richness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by forming a roux with the butter, giving body to the liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the sauce as it thickens it gently without boiling.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and a tender texture to the stewed sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with cream without boiling. Cream can curdle or separate when it boils, so it should be stirred in over gentle heat to keep the sauce smooth and silky.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, butter, flour, ham, clove, sorrel, mushroom):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, butter, flour, ham, clove, sorrel, mushroom. 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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