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Chicken a LA Marengo

A stew of chicken pieces cooked with mushrooms, truffles, shallots, parsley, butter, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Chicken a LA Marengo

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. Heat oil in a stewpan.

  2. Add chicken pieces with coarse sea salt.

  3. Brown the chicken well.

  4. When the chicken is half cooked, add sliced mushrooms and truffles.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine chopped truffles, parsley, mushrooms, shallots, and butter in a stewpan.

  2. Stir and cook until softened.

  3. Season the sauce with black pepper, salt, white wine, and a couple of spoonfuls of the oil from the chicken.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce hot under the chicken.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

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

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, which browns in oil to build flavour in the pan.
Truffles
Add a strong earthy aroma that gives the sauce its characteristic flavour.
Mushrooms
Soften in the butter and add savoury depth and body to the sauce.
Shallots
Soften and sweeten gently, adding a mild savoury base to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and helps lift the flavours.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the mushrooms and shallots soften and turn glossy.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken well. Deep browning through the Maillard reaction creates the savoury flavour base of the dish. Pale, under-browned chicken will taste flat and steam rather than sear, so give the pieces room and time to colour.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, mushroom, truffle, butter, shallot, pepper, white wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, truffle, butter, shallot, pepper, white wine. 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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