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Fricassee Sauce

A creamy sauce made with egg yolks, breadcrumbs, milk, butter, and spices, used for chicken fricassee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fricassee Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Finish the chicken

  1. Lift the fricasseed chickens from the saucepan with a slotted spoon.

  2. Drain the chickens.

  3. Place the chickens on a hot plate.

  4. Pour boiling sauce over the chickens.

  5. Let the sauce sit for 20-30 minutes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir the well-beaten yolks of the eggs gradually into the sauce.

  2. Transfer the sauce to a clean saucepan.

  3. Add salt, mace, cayenne, and butter.

  4. Stir constantly over medium heat for a few minutes.

  5. Mix in the cream.

  6. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  7. Serve immediately.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and enrich it, setting into a smooth body when gently heated.
Bread crumbs
Give the sauce body and help it thicken as they soak up the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the other ingredients.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a silkier texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the yolks in gradually. Egg yolks scramble if they meet hot liquid too quickly. Adding the beaten yolks slowly, while stirring, tempers them so the sauce thickens smoothly rather than curdling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, milk, pepper, butter, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, milk, pepper, butter, cream. 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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