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Chicken a LA Marengo

A chicken dish simmered in tomato and Espagnole sauces with truffle, mushrooms, and sherry, served on fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Marengo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Joint and skin the chicken, then fry it in the salad oil.

  2. Drain and trim the chicken if necessary.

Make the sauce and cook

  1. Boil the tomato and Espagnole sauces, then add the chicken and rough pieces of mushroom and truffle.

  2. Simmer gently until the chicken is tender.

Serve

  1. Place the chicken on the fried bread.

  2. Strain the sauce, add the strips of truffle and mushroom, and pour over the chicken.

  3. Garnish with pastry fleurons.

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. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 becomes tender through gentle simmering in the sauce.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and body to the sauce that the chicken cooks in.
Espagnole sauce
Forms the rich, thickened brown sauce base that coats the chicken.
Mushrooms
Contribute savoury, earthy flavour to the sauce.
Truffle
Adds a concentrated aroma to the sauce.
Sherry
Listed in the ingredients but not used in any step, so its role is not stated.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the chicken is tender. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and break up the sauce, so a gentle simmer lets the chicken cook evenly and stay moist.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, sauce, truffle, mushroom, sherry, bread):

  1. Tomatothe original
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, sauce, truffle, mushroom, sherry, bread. 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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