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Chicken a LA Marengo

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

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 and add chicken pieces with coarse sea salt.

  2. Brown the chicken well in the oil.

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

Make the sauce

  1. In another stewpan, combine chopped truffles, parsley, mushrooms, shallots, and butter.

  2. Stir and let it stew for a few minutes.

  3. Season with black pepper, salt, white wine, and 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; browning in oil builds savory flavor on the surface.
Truffles
Adds an intense earthy aroma that gives the sauce its distinctive character.
Mushrooms
Adds savory depth and moisture to the sauce as they release liquid while stewing.
Shallots
Softens into the sauce, adding mild sweetness and aromatic depth.
White wine
Adds acidity and lightness, helping lift and balance the savory sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken well. Browning creates flavorful browned surfaces through the Maillard reaction. Pale, under-browned pieces lack depth, and crowding the pan causes steaming instead of browning.

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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