Skip to main content
Main

Fricassee of Chicken

A stew of chicken pieces cooked in butter, flour, stock, herbs, and mushrooms, finished with egg yolks, cream, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Soak the chicken pieces in cold water for 1–2 hours to whiten the flesh, then remove and wipe them dry.

Make the stew

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the chicken pieces with flour, stirring to coat.

  2. Moisten with chicken stock, then add salt, pepper, sweet herbs, bay leaf, cloves, mushrooms, and onions.

  3. Let the mixture stew slowly until the chicken is cooked through.

  4. Combine egg yolks, cream, and lemon juice in a bowl, then add to the stew, warming gently without boiling.

Serve

  1. Garnish with sippets of bread, cockscombs, or crayfish before serving.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Marjoram + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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, which firms and sets as it cooks through slowly in the stew.
Butter
Carries fat for flavour and, with the flour, begins the thickened base of the sauce.
Flour
Coats the chicken and thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bound sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce gently when warmed, giving it a silky texture.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sharpness of the lemon in the sauce.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and savoury depth as they soften in the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Warming the egg and cream mixture. Egg yolks thicken at gentle heat but scramble if boiled. Adding them off the boil and warming slowly keeps the sauce smooth and silky rather than grainy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, pepper, parsley, thyme, marjoram. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipes