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To Fricassee Chickens

A French-style chicken stew with butter, flour, cream, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Fricassee Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Boil the chickens in water for 40 minutes, just enough to cover them.

  2. Skim off any scum that rises to the surface.

  3. Remove the chickens and carve them.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour some of the boiling water into a stewpan.

  2. Mix the butter and flour together, then stir into the boiling water.

  3. Add salt and the cream or milk.

Finish

  1. Place the chicken pieces in the stewpan, cover, and simmer gently for 8 to 10 minutes.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and gives it a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce when stirred into the hot water.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, softening the sauce's flavour and body.

The step that matters

Mix the butter and flour before stirring into the water. Combining butter and flour first forms a roux-like paste that disperses evenly. Adding flour straight into hot liquid tends to form lumps, which leaves the sauce uneven.

“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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