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Chicken En Fricassee

A French chicken stew with butter, flour, water, bay leaves, lemon peel, onions, and optional 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 En Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a large saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Mix in the flour until smooth, then add enough hot water to cover half of the chicken.

Cook the chicken

  1. Bring the sauce to a boil, then add the chicken, neck, and head, along with bay leaves and lemon peel.

  2. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes, turning the chicken halfway through.

  3. Add the small onions and cook until the chicken is done.

  4. If the sauce is too thin, remove the chicken and onions, and let the sauce reduce by boiling.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, slowly stir the sauce into the beaten egg yolk.

  2. Serve the chicken with the sauce poured over it, adding mushrooms if desired.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein; slow simmering in liquid keeps the meat tender and moist.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the sauce and helps form the flour base.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the finished sauce, giving it a smoother, creamier body.
Small onions
Become tender and sweet as they simmer in the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce into the egg yolk. Adding hot sauce to the egg yolk too quickly can scramble it. Adding the sauce slowly, while stirring, gently warms the yolk so it thickens the sauce smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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