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Chicken a LA Marengo

Chicken simmered in Espagnole sauce with tomatoes, sherry, mushrooms, olives, and truffle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Chicken a LA Marengo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Divide the chicken into neat pieces.

  2. Fry the chicken in salad oil until nicely browned, then drain well and pour away the oil.

Make the sauce and braise

  1. Heat the Espagnole sauce with the tomato pulp.

  2. Replace the chicken in the pan, add sherry (if using), mushrooms, olives, and truffle cut into large pieces.

  3. Simmer gently for 30 minutes or until the chicken is tender.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish, strain the sauce over, and garnish with mushrooms, olives, and truffle.

  2. Place a few fleurons around the dish.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Sherry + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Mushroom + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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; browning first gives colour and flavour to the finished dish.
Espagnole sauce
Forms the rich brown sauce base that gives body and savoury depth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a fresh tomato flavour that balances the rich sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic sweetness to the sauce.
Preserved mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a soft, meaty texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken until nicely browned, then drain well. Browning creates savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Draining off the oil keeps the finished sauce from tasting greasy and lets it thicken properly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, sauce, sherry, mushroom, olive, truffle, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Asparagusfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, sauce, sherry, mushroom, olive, truffle, pepper. 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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