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Chicken “a LA Champenoise

A savory chicken dish with ham, mushrooms, white wine, and gherkins, finished with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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.

  2. Remove the ham and chop it into small pieces.

  3. Add the chopped ham, carrot, and mushrooms back to the saucepan with butter.

  4. Sprinkle flour over the mixture and stir well.

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

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

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the flavour of the vegetables and ham.
Flour
Thickens the wine and gravy into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich gravy.
Gravy
Forms the savoury liquid base of the sauce.
Roasted chicken
Provides the main protein, gently warmed in the sauce.
Anchovies
Add savoury depth that rounds out the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the chicken and serve. Once the chicken and gherkins go in, the sauce must not boil. Boiling can toughen the meat and cause the sauce to break or become grainy, so keep it gently warm.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, butter, mushroom, flour, white wine, chicken, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, mushroom, flour, white wine, chicken, parsley. 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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