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Poulet À LA Marengo

A French chicken dish simmered with stock, wine, garlic, and spring onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,779 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Poulet À LA Marengo

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. Heat the olive oil in a wide flat saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the crushed garlic or chopped shallot, salt, and white pepper.

  3. Once hot, add the chicken pieces and cook until nicely browned, about 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the chicken stock, white wine, and chopped spring onions.

  2. If available, add some roast beef or mutton gravy.

  3. Simmer gently for at least 15 minutes, ensuring it does not boil away.

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. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  4. Olive + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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 and browns in the oil to build colour and flavour.
Olive oil
Carries heat evenly across the pan and helps the chicken brown rather than steam.
Chicken stock
Supplies liquid that becomes the body of the sauce as it simmers.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the sauce gently. A hard boil reduces the liquid too far and can make the sauce thick, salty, or harsh. A gentle simmer lets flavours blend while keeping enough liquid to coat the chicken.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, olive, clove, wine, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, olive, clove, wine, onion. 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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