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Simplek Mode Tor Fricassee

A chicken fricassee made with whole chicken, onions, parsley, nutmeg, and a creamy sauce of butter, flour, egg yolks, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Simplek Mode Tor Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Combine chicken, water, onions, parsley, nutmeg, salt, and pepper in a stewpan.

  2. Cook until the chicken is done, then remove it from the pan.

Make the sauce

  1. In a small saucepan, melt butter and flour until bubbling.

  2. Strain the gravy from the chicken into the saucepan and stir until smooth.

  3. Beat egg yolks with milk, then stir into the sauce after it has cooled for one minute.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the chicken and arrange as desired.

  2. Add mushrooms if using, and garnish with baked rough puff pastry 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat, and its cooking juices make the gravy base for the sauce.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the gravy into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and add richness and body when gently stirred in.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma as they cook into the gravy.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, so adding them to a hot sauce can scramble them. Letting the sauce cool briefly and stirring in the milk-yolk mixture gently keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, butter, flour, egg. 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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