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Chicken a LA King

Creamy chicken with mushrooms, truffle, and pimento 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

Prepare the chicken

  1. Place the chicken in a pot with the onion, cloves, carrot, celery, salt, and enough cold water to cover it. Boil until tender. Use the broth for soup.

  2. Remove the skin and bones from the chicken and cut the meat into pieces.

Make the chicken a la king

  1. Wash and peel the mushrooms, slice them, and place them in a saucepan with the butter. Cook for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the chopped pimento, cream, and chicken pieces to the saucepan along with the sliced truffle. Stir to combine.

  3. Serve the mixture with 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. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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 and the meat that makes up the body of the dish.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and a tender, meaty texture to the creamy mixture.
Cream
Makes the sauce rich and smooth, giving it body and a silky mouthfeel.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps cook the mushrooms in the saucepan.
Truffle
Adds a intense, aromatic earthy flavor to the finished mixture.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, meat, onion, mushroom, cream, carrot, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, onion, mushroom, cream, carrot, butter. 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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