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Chicken Marengo

Chicken Marengo is a sautéed chicken dish served with Italian sauce, mushrooms, truffles, and croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Chicken Marengo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean and cut up the chicken as for fricassee.

  2. Heat the sweet oil in a stewpan over medium heat.

Cook

  1. Add the chicken, season with salt and pepper, and cook until golden and nearly cooked through, turning occasionally.

  2. Add parsley, thyme, bay leaf, and clove tied together, along with the sliced mushrooms and truffles if using.

Arrange and serve

  1. Once cooked, arrange the chicken pieces on a serving dish as follows: neck and gizzard in the center, legs on each side, wings beside each leg, and the back pieces at the top.

  2. Pour Italian sauce over the chicken, top with mushrooms, truffles, and croutons, and serve.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

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

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; browning in the oil builds colour and savoury flavour.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture as they release juices while cooking.
Truffles
Add a strong, aromatic earthy flavour to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken in the sweet oil. Cooking over medium heat until golden builds flavour through browning, but too high a heat can scorch the outside before the pieces cook through. Turning occasionally helps the chicken colour evenly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, parsley, thyme, mushroom, truffle, sauce):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, parsley, thyme, mushroom, truffle, sauce. 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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