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Fricassee of Chickens or Rabbits

A white stew of chicken or rabbit with veal broth, mace, onion, sweetbreads, mushrooms, egg balls, artichoke, lemon, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Artichoke and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 636 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chickens or Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Blanch and drain the chicken or rabbit pieces.

  2. Place them in a stewpan with veal broth, mace, and whole onion.

  3. Stew gently until three-quarters cooked.

Finish and serve

  1. Add sweetbreads, mushrooms, egg balls, and artichoke pieces.

  2. Season with salt and lemon juice.

  3. Mix in the eggs and simmer for 5 minutes, avoiding curdling.

  4. Serve hot, removing the mace and onion.

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. Artichoke + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together636 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Mushroom + artichoketop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together447 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they set gently, enriching its texture and body.
Veal broth
Forms the savoury liquid that cooks the meat and becomes the sauce.
Sweetbreads
Add a tender, delicate texture and rich flavour to the stew.
Chicken or rabbit
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it stews slowly.

The step that matters

Mix in the eggs and simmer for 5 minutes, avoiding curdling.. Egg proteins set at temperatures near boiling and can turn grainy or curdle if overheated. Keeping the liquid below a hard simmer lets the eggs thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, veal, onion, mushroom, egg, artichoke, lemon):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, onion, mushroom, egg, artichoke, lemon. 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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