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Chicken a LA Marengo

Chicken simmered with tomato, onion, stock, herbs, and mushrooms, served on fried bread.

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

Brown the chicken

  1. Heat the salad oil in a pan and fry the chicken joints quickly until browned.

Make the stock

  1. Transfer the chicken to a stew pan and add the sliced tomato, onion, brown stock, and bouquet of herbs.

  2. Simmer gently for about 1 hour, then strain the mixture.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter, add the flour, and gradually stir in the strained stock, cooking well.

  2. Add the mushrooms and chicken joints to the sauce and cook for about 10 minutes.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then serve on a piece of fried bread, garnished with croutes of bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 the joints first adds colour and savoury flavour to the dish.
Flour
Cooked with melted butter to form a roux that thickens the stock into a sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavour and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury depth as it simmers with the chicken.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender texture to the finished sauce.
Tomato
Adds acidity and fresh flavour to the stock during simmering.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour into the butter before adding stock. Cooking the flour in melted butter until smooth forms a roux; adding stock gradually while stirring prevents lumps and lets the flour thicken the sauce evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, tomato, mushroom, butter, pepper, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, tomato, mushroom, butter, pepper, 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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