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Fricassee of Chickens, a LA Romalne

A chicken fricassee cooked with wine, consommé, and seafood, finished with lemon, butter, and pimentos.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chickens, a LA Romalne

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the chicken

  1. Combine chicken pieces, salad oil, bay leaf, thyme, shallots, mignonette pepper, salt, nutmeg, garlic, and pimentos in a sauté pan.

  2. Fry over medium heat until chicken is firm but not browned.

  3. Add flour and toss for 3 minutes.

  4. Pour in wine and consommé, stir until boiling, then reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.

  5. Skim off excess oil and drain chicken on a sieve, reserving sauce.

Finish the sauce and serve

  1. In a clean pan, combine chicken with sauce, mushrooms, crayfish tails, and cock's kernels.

  2. Warm the fricassee, mix in lemon juice and butter blended with pimentos and lobster coral, then strain.

  3. Serve garnished with raviolis.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful as it simmers in the sauce.
Salad oil
Conducts heat for the initial frying and carries flavour from the aromatics.
Flour
Thickens the wine and consommé into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and its reduction deepens the sauce's flavour.
White consommé
Supplies savoury body and liquid for the simmered sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy finish to the strained sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the chicken until firm but not browned. Searing too hard browns the surface and can toughen the meat, while a gentle fry sets the surface so it holds its shape through the simmer, keeping the sauce pale and delicate.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, thyme, shallot, pepper, nutmeg, clove, flour):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, thyme, shallot, pepper, nutmeg, clove, flour. 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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