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Fricassee of Cold Roast Fowl

A fricassee made from the remnants of roasted fowl, simmered with lemon peel, herbs, and a creamy egg‑cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Fricassee of Cold Roast Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Cut up the remnants of the roasted fowl.

  2. In a stew-pan, combine the trimmings and bones, lemon peel, herbs, pepper, salt, and water.

  3. Stew gently until reduced by half.

  4. Strain the gravy.

Finish the fricassee

  1. Cut the remaining fowl into joints.

  2. Add the fowl to the gravy.

  3. Heat thoroughly.

  4. Beat the egg and mix it with the cream.

  5. Stir the mixture gradually into the gravy.

  6. Heat the mixture until very hot, but do not let it boil.

  7. If eggs are not available, thicken the gravy with corn-starch blended with cold water.

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. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Roasted fowl remnants
Provide the meat and bones that flavour the gravy and form the dish.
Egg
Thickens the cream mixture gently as it heats, giving the gravy body and richness.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished gravy.
Corn-starch
Thickens the gravy when eggs are not used, giving it body as it heats.

The step that matters

Heat the egg and cream mixture without boiling. Egg proteins set when heated gently, thickening the gravy smoothly. If it boils, the egg can curdle and the texture turns grainy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, egg, cream, corn):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, cream, corn. 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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