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Chicken Fricassee

A chicken dish simmered in stock, butter, flour, nutmeg, and finished with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Put the chicken in enough boiling water to cover.

  2. Add salt and let it simmer slowly until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add flour and then the chicken stock.

  3. Stir in a little nutmeg.

  4. Just before serving, add the egg yolks.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the dish, becoming tender as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by binding with the butter and stock as it cooks.
Chicken stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury flavour.
Egg yolks
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a smooth, velvety texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the sauce is too hot they can curdle and turn grainy. Adding them just before serving, off the heat or at low heat, keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Jalapenofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, 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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