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Fricassee De Poulet

A French chicken stew with butter, flour, stock, herbs, onions, and a lemon‑egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Fricassee De Poulet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Soak the chicken pieces in tepid water for 30 minutes.

Make the fricassee

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the chicken pieces, cooking gently without browning.

  2. Stir in the flour and gradually add the warm stock.

  3. Season with white pepper, salt, the bouquet of herbs, bay leaf, and onions.

  4. Bring to a boil without a lid to reduce the gravy, then cover and simmer gently.

  5. Remove the chicken and bouquet from the pan.

  6. Strain the gravy if desired.

Finish the sauce

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with lemon juice.

  2. Slowly mix the beaten yolks into the gravy off the heat, stirring continuously.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, as it cooks gently, flavours the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while the chicken cooks without browning.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth gravy.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the finished gravy, giving it a silky body.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the gravy as they simmer.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat. If the gravy is hot or boiling when the yolks go in, they can scramble. Removing the pan from the heat and stirring constantly while adding the yolks slowly keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, onion, egg, lemon. 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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