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Fricassee of Chickens a l’iTALIENNE

A chicken fricassee cooked with mushrooms, ham, onion, consommé, cream, and lemon, finished with egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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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 of Chickens a l’iTALIENNE

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Boil water with salt in a pot.

  2. Add chicken legs and wings; boil for 2 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and let chicken cool in the water.

  4. Trim chicken pieces and remove skin.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, sauté mushrooms, ham, and onion in butter until frying.

  2. Stir in flour.

  3. Gradually add consommé; bring to a boil.

  4. Add chicken to the sauce and cook until done.

  5. Remove chicken and place in another pan.

  6. Reduce the sauce like béchamel; add cream and strain over chicken.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the chicken with a few small stewed mushrooms.

  2. Before serving, mix in egg yolk, cream, and lemon juice; heat gently 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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein; poaching first keeps the meat tender and moist.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the sautéed vegetables and enriches the sauce with fat.
Flour
Thickens the consommé into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Consommé
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving savoury depth.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the finished sauce, giving it a silky texture.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, softening its flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream at the end. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat, and if the sauce boils it can curdle and turn grainy. Heat it gently only until it coats a spoon.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, mushroom, ham, butter, flour, cream, egg):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, ham, butter, flour, cream, egg. 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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