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Poulet a LA Marengo

Poulet à la Marengo is a French chicken dish simmered with mushrooms, flour, stock, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Poulet a LA Marengo

4 persons

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. Cut the fowl into 8 or 10 pieces.

  2. Put the pieces with the oil into a stewpan and brown them over a moderate fire.

  3. Dredge the browned pieces in the flour.

Make the sauce

  1. When the flour is browned, pour in the stock or water.

  2. Let it simmer very slowly for more than half an hour, skimming off the fat as it rises to the top.

  3. Add the mushrooms.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, garlic, and sugar.

  5. Reduce the sauce by boiling it quickly over the fire, keeping it stirred until sufficiently thick to adhere to the back of a spoon.

Serve

  1. Take out the fowl and arrange pyramidically on the dish, with the inferior joints at the bottom.

  2. Pour the sauce over the fowl and serve.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

640Calories
13 gProtein
15 gFat
112 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 8 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Olive Oil1 tbsp (14g)119
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Garlic1 clove (3g)4
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Saladnot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Garlic + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Clove + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the meat, which is browned first to build flavour and then gently simmered until tender.
Flour
Browns and thickens the stock into a sauce that clings to the meat.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that simmers with the chicken.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and texture to the sauce.
Garlic
Adds aroma and savoury flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the sauce. Boiling quickly while stirring thickens the sauce by evaporating water and concentrating the starch from the flour. Stirring prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan, and the sauce is ready when it coats the back of a spoon.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, clove, mushroom, pepper):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, clove, mushroom, 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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