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Chicken Fricassee

A chicken stew made by simmering, browning, and coating the meat, then finishing with a milk‑based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Singe and cut the chicken as you would for serving.

  2. Put the chicken in a pot, cover with boiling water, add salt and pepper, and let simmer until tender.

  3. Remove the chicken, dredge it with salt, pepper, and flour, and brown in hot butter.

Make the sauce

  1. Place the chicken on a hot platter, strain the cooking liquid, and remove the fat.

  2. Add 1 cup of rich milk to the liquid and heat again.

  3. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a saucepan, add 2 tablespoons of flour, mix well, and pour into the chicken liquid.

  4. Add salt, pepper, celery salt, and lemon juice to the mixture.

  5. Beat 1 egg well and slowly pour the sauce over it, stirring constantly.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the chicken and serve immediately.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein; simmering until tender makes the meat soft and easy to eat.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and helps the dredged chicken brown in the hot butter.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and browns the dredged chicken for color.
Rich milk
Adds creaminess and body to the sauce.
Egg
Enriches and thickens the sauce when beaten and combined with it.

The step that matters

Pouring the sauce into the beaten egg. Egg proteins set with heat and can scramble if hot sauce is added too fast or unstirred. Pouring slowly while stirring constantly tempers the egg, keeping the sauce smooth and thickened.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, flour, butter, milk, lemon, 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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