Fricassee

Fricassee or fricassée /ˈfrɪkəsiː/ is a stew made with pieces of meat that have been browned in butter then served in a sauce flavored with the cooking stock. Fricassee is usually made with chicken, veal or rabbit, with variations limited only by what ingredients the cook has at hand.

Fricassee is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. It is a word of French origin, although the exact etymology is unclear. It is theorized to be a compound of the French frire (to fry) and casser or quasser (to break in pieces).

By the general description of frying and then braising in liquid, there are recipes for fricassee as far back as the earliest version of the medieval French cookbook Le Viandier, circa 1300. In 1490, it was first referred to specifically as friquassée in the print edition of Le Viandier.

The 16th-century cookery book The Good Huswifes Jewell contains "For fricasies of a lambes head and purtenance".

The perfect English cooke contains instructions to prepare a "Fregacy of Lamb or Veal". Jean-Baptiste Tavernier describes "a lusty Fricassie" in his late 17th-century Travels through Turkey to Persia.

English fricassees were usually thickened with egg yolks, while Italian fricassea used a mixture of lemon and egg yolks. By the 18th century, egg yolks had started to be replaced by flour in English and American cuisines. In Martha Washington's recipe for chicken fricassee, the chicken was stewed in gravy; then a sauce was made with cream and egg yolks.

The early 19th-century cookery book A New System of Domestic Cookery by Maria Rundell says white sauce can be used for fricassee of "Fowls, Rabbits, White Meat Fish, of Vegetables". Broth made with chicken necks or feet or used to boil meats, or similar is simmered with herbs and lemon peel, then thickened with cream (or egg yolk), flour, and butter to make into a sauce.

Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child in their Mastering the Art of French Cooking describe it as "halfway between a sauté and a stew" in that a sauté has no liquid added, while a stew includes liquid from the beginning. In a fricassee, cut-up meat is first sauteed (but not browned), then liquid is added, and it is simmered to finish cooking. Cookbook author James Peterson notes that some modernized versions of the recipe call for the meat to be thoroughly browned before braising, but the classical version requires that both meat and vegetables remain with no caramelization.