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Fricassee De Poulet

A French chicken stew with butter, stock, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fricassee De Poulet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Pluck, draw, singe, and chop off the legs and feet of the chicken.

  2. Cut the chicken into pieces: thighs, wings, breast, and back.

  3. Wash the liver and gizzard, then soak all pieces in cold water to remove blood.

Make the broth

  1. In a stewpan, melt 1 ounce of butter and lightly brown the carrot, onion, celery, mace, parsley, cloves, salt, and peppercorns.

  2. Add the chicken pieces and pour in 1 quart of white stock or boiling water.

  3. Cover and stew gently for 45 minutes.

  4. Skim and strain off the vegetables, setting the chicken aside and keeping the broth.

Make the sauce

  1. In another pan, melt 2 ounces of butter and gradually mix in 2 tablespoons of flour without browning it.

  2. Remove from heat and slowly pour in the broth, stirring until smooth.

  3. Beat the yolks of 4 eggs with ½ ounce of butter and 2 tablespoons of cream, then gradually add to the sauce, mixing for 5 minutes.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat and, when simmered, flavors the broth that becomes the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and broth into a smooth sauce when cooked without browning.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the broth base and the flour roux.
Cream
Adds richness and softness to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the sauce. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the sauce is too hot or added too quickly they can scramble. Adding them gradually with constant stirring keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, carrot, onion, celery, parsley, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, carrot, onion, celery, parsley, clove. 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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