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Chicken a LA King

A creamy chicken dish with mushrooms, peppers, and a custard sauce served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chicken a LA King

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chicken base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the mushrooms and cook for five minutes.

  3. Add the chicken and heat through.

  4. Stir in the salt and strips of pepper.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks until light.

  2. Mix in the milk and cream.

  3. Cook the egg mixture over boiling water, stirring constantly until thickened, about 1.5 minutes.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the hot chicken mixture and mix well.

  2. Serve immediately on toast.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set when gently heated, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens when combined with the egg yolks.
Butter
Provides fat for cooking the mushrooms and carries flavor through the dish.
Mushrooms
Contribute savory, earthy flavor and a tender bite to the chicken mixture.

The step that matters

Cook the egg mixture over boiling water, stirring constantly. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if they get too hot they scramble and turn grainy. Constant stirring over steady, indirect heat keeps the sauce smooth.

“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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