Skip to main content
Main

To Fricassee Chickens

A stew of boiled chicken pieces simmered in a spiced gravy thickened with flour and butter, finished with a cream and egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Fricassee Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Boil the chickens in a small quantity of water until more than half cooked.

  2. Let them cool, then cut them up.

  3. Simmer the chicken pieces in the gravy made from the boiling liquid, veal or mutton, onion, mace, lemon peel, white pepper, and sweet herbs until tender.

  4. Keep the chicken hot while you thicken the sauce.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain the sauce, return it to the saucepan, and add salt, nutmeg, flour, and butter; bring to a boil.

  2. Before serving, beat the egg yolk with the cream and stir over low heat without boiling.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the chicken.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce's texture.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolk and cream over low heat without boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the mixture boils, the proteins scramble and the sauce turns grainy and curdled.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, veal, onion, mace, lemon, nutmeg, flour):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, onion, mace, lemon, nutmeg, 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.

More chicken fricassee recipes

with Mushrooms 6White 6Cold 4with Tomato Sauce 3 See all 369 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes