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Chicken Fricassee

Chicken Fricassee is a dish of boiled chicken in a creamy sauce thickened with egg, served with optional garnishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken and sauce

  1. Cut the chicken into neat joints while it is still warm.

  2. Prepare the Bechamel sauce as directed.

  3. Add the chicken pieces to the sauce and heat until thoroughly hot.

Finish the sauce

  1. Blend the egg and cream or milk, then stir into the sauce by the side of the fire until it thickens, without boiling.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Arrange the chicken on a hot dish and strain the sauce over it.

  2. Garnish with truffles, cooked green peas, or croutons of fried bread, and serve with a border of mashed potatoes if desired.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Chicken
Provides the main body of the dish, held in the sauce and served as joints.
Bechamel sauce
Forms the creamy base that coats and carries the chicken.
Egg
Thickens the sauce gently when stirred in with the cream or milk.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and moisture, giving the sauce a smooth, mellow texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with egg and cream. Egg proteins set when heated, so the mixture must stay below boiling. Boiling can curdle the egg and leave the sauce grainy instead of smooth and thick.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, sauce, cream, egg, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, sauce, cream, egg, pepper. 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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