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Chicken Fricassee

A sauce of butter, flour, chicken broth, cream, lemon juice, mace, pepper, and sea salt is poured over chicken joints and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the skin from the chicken.

  2. Cut the chicken into neat joints.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix 1 ounce of butter with the flour over medium heat.

  2. Gradually add the chicken broth.

  3. Stir in the cream and a little lemon juice.

  4. Stir the sauce over the heat for 5 minutes.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the chicken in another saucepan.

  2. Heat the chicken through.

  3. Remove the mace.

  4. Arrange the chicken joints in a circle on a serving dish.

  5. Cover the chicken with the sauce.

  6. In another pan, heat the mushrooms with a little lemon juice and the remaining ½ ounce of butter.

  7. Once hot, place the mushrooms in the center of the chicken circle.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and gives the mushrooms a rich, glossy finish.
Flour
Thickens the butter and broth into a smooth, stable sauce.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy flavour and a tender, juicy texture.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce as it thickens. Flour must be cooked and stirred smoothly into the butter and liquid; if the sauce is left unstirred or added too quickly, lumps can form and the starch may not thicken evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, butter, flour, cream, lemon, pepper. 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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