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Another Way to Fricassee Chickens

A stew of chicken joints simmered with water, butter, flour, onions, mace, and finished with a cream and egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Another Way to Fricassee Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Combine water, butter, flour, salt, and white pepper in a stew pan and stir until hot.

Stew the chicken

  1. Add the chicken joints, minced onions, and mace, and stew for 1 hour.

Finish with the liaison

  1. Mix the egg yolks with cream.

  2. Gradually stir this mixture into the stew, ensuring it does not boil.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a sauce as it heats with the butter and water.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce when gently heated, giving it a silky, rich texture.
Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender during the long, gentle stew.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the flavour, smoothing the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolk and cream into the stew. Egg yolks set when heated, so if the stew boils the sauce can curdle and turn grainy. Adding the mixture gradually and keeping the heat below boiling keeps it smooth.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, chicken, onion, mace, egg, cream. 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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