Forms: 6–7 fricase, fricacy, -ie, 6–8 fricasy, (7 frycase, fricace, fregacy), 7 fricassie, (frigasie), (8 fricasey, frigacy, frigusee), 7–9 fricassé, 7–9 fricasee, 7– fricassee. [a. F. fricassée, f. fricasser to mince and cook in sauce; of unknown origin.]
1. Meat sliced and fried or stewed and served with sauce. Now usually a ragout of small animals or birds cut in pieces.
1568. North, trans. Gueuara’s Diall Pr. (1619), 624. I heard a Knight make great boast and vaunt, that hee coulde make seuen manner of fricasies, foure kindes of Pyes, twelue sorts of sawces, and ten of fruit tartes, and twelue diuers wayes to dresse egges.
1597. 2nd Pt. Gd. Hus-wiues Jewell, B ij. For fricasies of a lambes head and purtenance.
1656. Perfect Eng. Cooke, 3. To make a Fregacy of Lamb or Veal.
1678. J. Phillips, Tavernier’s Trav., Persia, III. i. 101. Little Birds lighted upon our Cordage, of which we caught enow to make a lusty Fricassie.
1772–84. Cook, Voy. (1790), I. 265–6. Some of these dishes were observed to be served up four times successively: a duck, which was hot at dinner, was brought cold in the evening, the next day served up as a fricassee, and was converted into forced meat at night.
1858. Hawthorne, Fr. & It. Jrnls. (1872), I. 25. A fillet of stewed beef, and a fowl, in some sort of delicate fricasee.
fig. a. 1657. Lovelace, Lucasta (1659), 80.
| Hotter than all the rosted Cooks you sat | |
| To dresse the fricace of your Alphabet. |
1861. Thornbury, Turner, I. 300. In 1818 Turner exhibited his confused and unequal picture of the ‘Field of Waterloo,’ engraved by C. Lewis; a muddle of sublimity, a perfect fricassee of ill-drawn lumps of figures, yet sublimely lurid in general effect.
† 2. (See quot. 1611.) Obs. rare–1.
c. 1575. Life Ld. Grey (Camden), 30. It was resolved, yf there myght bee leazure, too make a fricoisie within the bullckwarck, and prezently too withdrawe all from thence, savyng a certayne for the face and stale too tyll in the ennemie, and then too have blowen it up whoale.
[1611. Cotgr., Fricassee … a kind of charge for a Morter, or murdering peece, of stones, bullets, nailes, and peeces of old yron closed together with grease, and gunpowder.]
† 3. A kind of dance: see quot. Obs. rare–1.
1775. Mrs. Harris, in Priv. Lett. Ld. Malmesbury (1870), I. 294. There is a new dance at the Festino, called the Fricasée…. It begins with an affront, then they fight and fire pistols, then they are reconciled, embrace, and so ends the dance.
