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Chicken À LA King

A creamy chicken dish with mushrooms, pimentos, and a butter‑flour sauce served over biscuits, toast or toasted English muffins.

From the Wikibooks Cookbook · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,058 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Chicken À LA King

serves 2

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Season the chicken breasts with salt, pepper, and garlic powder, then cube them into bite-size pieces.

  2. Sauté the chicken cubes, onion, mushrooms, and pimentos in the olive oil in a skillet.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter, stir in the flour, and cook over medium heat for about a minute.

  2. Add the chicken broth and stir until thickened.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the sauce to the chicken and vegetable mixture; stir together and cook a few more minutes.

  2. Serve over biscuits, toast, or toasted English muffins.

Recipe from the Wikibooks Cookbook.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,172 recipes

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

  4. Garlic + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Olive + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned 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 breasts
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender and juicy when cooked just through.
Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux, carrying flavor and helping the sauce feel rich.
All-purpose flour
Cooked with the butter to form a roux that thickens the broth into a smooth sauce.
Chicken broth
Liquid that gelatinizes with the roux to form the body of the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savory flavor and a soft, meaty texture to the filling.
Pimentos
Add mild sweetness, color, and a slightly peppery aroma to the dish.

The step that matters

Cooking the roux and then adding the broth. Cooking the butter and flour for about a minute removes raw flour taste, and stirring the broth in gradually keeps the sauce smooth instead of lumpy as starch swells and thickens.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, garlic, olive, mushroom, butter, flour):

  1. Spinachbetter flavor fit
  2. Tomatoabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Capsicumabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, garlic, olive, mushroom, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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