Skip to main content
Main

Fricassee De Poulet a LA Bourdois

A French chicken fricassee with mushrooms, parsley, green onions, and a creamy sauce thickened with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Fricassee De Poulet a LA Bourdois

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Wash the chicken pieces in lukewarm water, then blanch them in boiling water.

  2. Drain and place the chicken in cold water.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt ½ cup of butter in a stewpan, add mushrooms, parsley, and green onions.

  2. Add the chicken pieces and fry lightly, dusting with flour and coarse sea salt, and moisten with hot water.

  3. Boil for over 30 minutes, skimming occasionally.

  4. Remove the chicken and strain the sauce over it in another saucepan.

  5. Thicken the sauce with 2 or 3 beaten egg yolks mixed with milk or cream, and bring to a boil.

  6. Add lemon juice and chopped parsley to taste.

Serve

  1. Keep the chicken warm in a bain-marie until dinner.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender during the long simmer.
Butter
Fat that starts the sauce and carries flavour from the aromatics.
Flour
Dusted on the chicken to help thicken the sauce as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the finished sauce, giving it a smooth, velvety texture.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and moisture to the sauce, softening its flavour.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the sauce as they cook.

The step that matters

Thickening with egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble and curdle if they get too hot. Adding them off the heat or whisking with a little warm sauce first, then bringing the sauce only to a gentle boil, keeps it smooth.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, mushroom, onion, flour, egg, milk):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, mushroom, onion, flour, egg, milk. 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