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Fricassee of Chickevs

A chicken fricassee simmered in gravy with herbs, thickened with flour and butter, finished with egg yolk and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chickevs

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken in a small quantity of water until cooked, then let it cool.

  2. Cut the chicken into pieces and simmer in the gravy made from the boiling liquid, veal or mutton, onion, mace, lemon peel, white pepper, and sweet herbs until tender.

  3. Keep the chicken warm while you thicken the sauce.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain the sauce and return it to the saucepan with salt, nutmeg, flour, and butter.

  2. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  3. Before serving, beat the egg yolk and stir in the cream over low heat, but do not let it boil.

  4. You can omit the egg for a simpler version.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, carrying flavour and smoothness.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce gently when heated without boiling.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.
Chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow simmering.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream. Egg yolk thickens by gently setting its proteins. If the sauce boils after the yolk goes in, it can curdle or turn grainy, so it must stay below a boil.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, veal, onion, mace, lemon, nutmeg, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, onion, mace, lemon, nutmeg, flour. 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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