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Chicken a LA Marengo

A chicken dish cooked with olive oil, flour, mushrooms, garlic, stock, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,665 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Chicken a LA Marengo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Cut the chickens in half.

  2. Season with flour, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Fry slowly in olive oil for about 25 minutes, or until browned.

  4. Add browned flour to the oil. Mix well.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add mushrooms, minced garlic, and stock.

  2. Cook for 30 minutes.

  3. Stir in cream.

  4. Cook for an additional 15 minutes.

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. Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Olive + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Chicken + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,850 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

What each ingredient does

Spring chickens
Provide the main protein that is browned and then braised until tender.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce as it combines with the oil and stock.
Olive oil
Conducts heat for frying and helps the chicken brown evenly.
Stock
Provides the liquid that simmers the chicken and forms the sauce base.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and savory body to the sauce during simmering.
Cream
Adds richness and smooths the sauce's texture at the end.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken slowly. Frying slowly in oil lets the flour-dusted skin brown gradually, building flavor through browning reactions without scorching. Rushing over high heat can burn the coating before the chicken cooks through.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Garlicthe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Rosemaryfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, olive, mushroom, cream, 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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