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Poulet a LA Marengo

A French chicken dish simmered with shallots, garlic, herbs, and a roux-based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Poulet a LA Marengo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the chicken as for a chicken fricassee.

  2. Heat the oil in a sauté pan and arrange the chicken pieces without overlapping.

  3. Add salt, pepper, shallots, garlic, bay leaf, thyme, and parsley.

  4. Cook for 25 minutes, ensuring the chicken is cooked through.

  5. Remove the chicken and keep warm.

Make the sauce

  1. In the same pan, add flour and stir over heat for 4 minutes.

  2. Gradually add the chicken broth and cook for 10 minutes, stirring with a wooden spoon.

  3. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken as you would for a chicken fricassee, pouring the sauce over it.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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; cooking it slowly in oil and aromatics keeps the meat moist and tender.
Flour
Thickens the cooking juices into a smooth sauce as it is stirred into the hot pan fat.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the pan flavours and loosening the thickened flour.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion-like flavour that deepens as they cook in the pan.
Oil
Conducts heat for browning the chicken and carries the aromatic flavours through the pan.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the pan fat. Stirring the flour over heat for the full 4 minutes cooks out its raw starchy taste and lets it thicken the sauce evenly once broth is added gradually, preventing lumps.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, shallot, thyme, parsley, flour):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, shallot, thyme, parsley, 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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