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Fricassee of Chickens

A stew of boiled chicken with veal or mutton, onions, mace, lemon peel, herbs, and a creamy sauce.

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

Fricassee of Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken in a small quantity of water until cooked through.

  2. Let the chicken cool, then cut it into pieces.

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

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

Make the sauce

  1. Strain the cooking liquid back into a saucepan, add salt, nutmeg, flour, and butter, and bring to a boil.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolk and mix with cream, then stir over low heat without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken with the thickened sauce.

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

Egg yolk
Thickens the cream sauce and gives it a rich, smooth body when heated gently.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety texture.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy-like sauce as it comes to a boil.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the sauce and helps it feel smooth.

The step that matters

Stir the egg and cream over low heat without boiling. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heating, but if it gets too hot it scrambles and curdles, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

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.

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