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Fricassee De Poulet I

A French dish of chicken pieces simmered in water and then served in a thickened egg yolk and cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Fricassee De Poulet I

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Cut the cleaned chickens into pieces, reserving finer parts for the fricassee and coarser parts for the sauce.

  2. In a china-lined saucepan, combine the coarser chicken pieces, water, garlic, onion, parsley, pork, pepper, and salt.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  4. Add the finer chicken pieces and let them boil slowly until done, about 1 to 2 hours.

  5. Once tender, remove the finer pieces and keep warm.

  6. Strain the gravy and skim off excess fat.

  7. Return it to the heat.

Make the sauce

  1. In another saucepan, blend the butter and flour over low heat without browning.

  2. Gradually add some boiling gravy to the butter-flour mixture, stirring until smooth, then add the rest of the gravy.

  3. Stir and boil for 4 to 5 minutes, then remove from heat.

  4. Quickly stir in the beaten egg yolks mixed with cream and add lemon juice.

  5. Do not boil again to prevent curdling.

  6. Add white wine and mushrooms if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken in a border of rice or mashed potatoes, pouring the sauce over it.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the meat that is poached until tender and served in the dish.
Flour
Thickens the butter and gravy into a smooth, stable sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and give it a thick, creamy body when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and softness to the sauce alongside the egg yolks.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor and forms the base roux with the flour.

The step that matters

Do not boil the sauce after adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat, and boiling them causes the proteins to scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, garlic, pepper, onion, butter, cream, carrot):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, garlic, pepper, onion, butter, cream, carrot. 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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