Skip to main content
Main

Fricassee of Chicken

A creamy chicken stew thickened with butter, flour, cream, egg yolks, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Place the chicken and giblets in a stewing pan and add enough water to partly cover them.

  2. Simmer gently until the chicken is tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add the flour to the butter and mix until smooth.

  3. Pour the mixture into the pan where the chicken was cooked.

  4. Stir continually until it boils.

  5. Add salt and pepper to taste.

  6. Remove from heat.

  7. Stir in the cream, egg yolks, and chopped parsley. Be careful not to boil.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the chicken.

  2. Serve.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness when stirred in off the heat.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream and egg yolks off the heat, and do not boil. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and curdle or scramble if they get too hot. Removing the pan from the heat and avoiding a boil keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

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

More chicken fricassee recipes

with Mushrooms 6White 6Cold 4with Tomato Sauce 3 See all 369 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes