Skip to main content
Main

Fricassée of Fowls

A stew of poultry pieces simmered in water with onion, parsley, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fricassée of Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Prepare and truss the fowls, removing the nails and claws.

  2. Cut the fowls into pieces: legs, drumsticks, thighs, wings, and breast.

Poach the chicken

  1. In a stewpan, combine water, onion, parsley, and salt; add the fowls and bring to a boil.

  2. Remove the fowls, drain, and wipe them clean.

Finish in butter

  1. In a clean stewpan, melt the butter over gentle heat and add the fowls.

  2. Cook the fowls gently until heated through.

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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowls
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and moist during gentle poaching.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the finished fowls a silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil, then wipe the fowls clean. Poaching the fowls in seasoned water flavours the meat, but the cook must avoid letting the liquid boil hard, since vigorous boiling toughens muscle proteins and makes the meat stringy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, 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.

More chicken fricassée recipes

with Mushrooms 4 See all 30 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes