Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Saute, a LA Marengo

A sautéed chicken dish flavored with flour, vinegar, sugar, and optional olives or onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,888 recipes. Both carry acetic acid hexyl ester, which smells sweet, green. The science ↓

Chicken Saute, a LA Marengo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken into pieces: wings, legs, and breast. Remove entrails and save the heart, liver, and gizzard.

Brown and braise

  1. Heat salad oil in a saucepan and add the chicken pieces.

  2. When the chicken begins to brown, stir in 1 tablespoon of flour and cook until browned.

  3. Cover the chicken with hot water and season with salt and pepper.

  4. If desired, add olives or button onions when adding the water and cook slowly.

  5. Stir with a flat wooden stick to avoid scratching the pan.

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. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  2. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 it first builds color and flavor in the pan.
Flour
Coats the browned chicken and thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce.
Salad oil
Conducts heat for browning the chicken and carries flavor across the pan surface.

The step that matters

Brown the chicken before adding water. Browning the chicken in hot oil develops color through the Maillard reaction, which creates deeper flavor. Adding water too early steams the pieces instead, leaving the sauce pale and flat.

“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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes