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Chicken “ a LA Champenoise

A chicken dish with ham, carrot, mushrooms, white wine, gravy, gherkins, parsley, anchovies, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Chicken “ a LA Champenoise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, cook the ham over medium heat until nearly done, then remove and chop into small pieces.

  2. Add the chopped ham, carrot, and mushrooms to the same saucepan with butter and sprinkle with flour.

  3. Pour in the white wine and gravy, then stew together and skim carefully.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the roasted chicken, gherkins, parsley, and anchovies, tossing gently without boiling.

  2. Finish with a squeeze of lemon juice 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds a rich, rounded flavour as it cooks with the vegetables.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, lifting and balancing the richness of the gravy and ham.
Gravy
Provides the main liquid and savoury body of the sauce.
Ham
Contributes salty, smoky meat flavour to the sauce.
Roasted chicken
Forms the main protein, gently warmed in the sauce so it stays tender.

The step that matters

Adding the chicken without boiling. Once the chicken, gherkins, parsley and anchovies go in, the sauce should only be gently warmed. Boiling can toughen cooked chicken and make the sauce break or turn cloudy.

“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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