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To Fricassee Chickens

A stew of chicken pieces cooked with onion, herbs, ham, butter, stock, flour, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Fricassee Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Wash the chicken and cut it into joints.

  2. Scald the chicken and remove the skin.

Stew and finish

  1. In a stew pan, combine the chicken, onion, parsley, thyme, lemon peel, nutmeg, ham, and butter.

  2. Let the mixture stew for 15 minutes.

  3. Add the white stock thickened with flour and butter.

  4. Remove the parsley, ham, thyme, and lemon peel before serving.

  5. Just before serving, beat the egg yolks in the cream and stir it in gradually.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body of the dish, cooked gently until tender in the stew.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream into a rich sauce as they gently set with heat.
Flour
Thickens the white stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stew and the thickened stock.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the sauce is too hot or boiling. Stir the mixture in gradually, off the heat or over very low heat, to keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, parsley, thyme, lemon, nutmeg, ham, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, parsley, thyme, lemon, nutmeg, ham, butter. 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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