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Fricassee of Chicken

A creamy chicken stew with butter, flour, stock, mushrooms, ham, spices, and cream, garnished with lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, warm the butter over medium heat.

  2. Gradually add the flour, stirring until smooth.

  3. Slowly add the white stock, mushrooms, mace, ham, pepper, and salt.

  4. Bring to a gentle boil, then strain through a sieve into a clean saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the chicken to the saucepan and keep warm on a hot plate without boiling.

  2. Just before serving, stir in the cream and garnish with lemon slices.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Carries flavour and adds richness to the roux and sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as its starch swells when heated.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the other flavours.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished sauce.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy savoury flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the chicken warm without boiling. A hard boil toughens the chicken's proteins and can make the sauce grainy or separate. Holding it at a gentle heat keeps the meat tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

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