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Fricassee De Poulet

A French chicken stew with vegetables, mushroom sauce, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fricassee De Poulet

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Truss the chicken as for boiling and place it in a stewpan with enough boiling water to cover.

  2. Boil and remove the scum.

  3. Add the carrot, onion, thyme, bay leaf, celery, parsley, cloves, peppercorns, mace, and stock.

  4. Boil gently for about an hour until the chicken is fully cooked.

  5. Remove the chicken and cut it into neat pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In another stewpan, mix the butter and flour together.

  2. Add the mushroom stalks and chicken stock, skimming off the grease.

  3. Stir until it boils, then let it simmer gently for 20 minutes with the lid half on.

  4. Skim off the butter that rises to the top and reduce the sauce to 1 pint.

  5. Flavor the sauce with lemon juice.

Finish

  1. Add the cream, mushrooms, and chicken pieces.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which is cooked gently in stock so it stays moist and tender.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavour, and forms the base roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and liquid into a smooth, coating consistency.
Second white stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying flavour and body from the poaching.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender texture to the finished sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture, mellowing the sauce's finish.

The step that matters

Cooking the roux and sauce. Flour must be cooked with the butter and liquid long enough to lose its raw taste and thicken fully. Gentle simmering prevents lumps and scorching, and skimming removes surface fat so the sauce stays clean and smooth.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, onion, celery, parsley, thyme, 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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