Skip to main content
Main

Fricassee of Spring Chickens, À LA Bourguignonne

A fricassee of spring chickens cooked with butter, onions, mushrooms, carrots, wine, stock, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley.

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

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fricassee of Spring Chickens, À LA Bourguignonne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Cut the spring chickens into pieces.

  2. In a large pan, melt butter and sauté chopped onions until translucent.

  3. Add sliced mushrooms and diced carrots, cooking until softened.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  5. Add the chicken pieces and brown them on all sides.

Simmer and serve

  1. Pour in white wine and chicken stock, then simmer until the chicken is cooked through.

  2. Garnish with chopped parsley 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  4. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Spring chickens
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender as it simmers in the liquid.
Butter
Carries the onions and browns the chicken, adding richness and flavour.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, building the base flavour of the sauce.
Mushrooms
Release moisture as they cook, adding savoury depth to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic flavour to the liquid as it simmers.
Chicken stock
Supplies liquid that cooks the chicken and forms the body of the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken on all sides. Browning creates flavourful Maillard compounds on the surface. Chicken pieces that are crowded or wet will steam instead, losing that colour and depth before the liquid goes in.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, mushroom, carrot, pepper, white wine, parsley):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, mushroom, carrot, pepper, white wine, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes