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Chicken a LA Marengo

Chicken à la Maringo is a braised chicken dish with Espagnole sauce, tomatoes, sherry, mushrooms, olives, and truffle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Chicken a LA Marengo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken into neat pieces.

  2. Fry the pieces in salad oil until browned.

  3. Drain the oil.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the Espagnole sauce with the tomato pulp.

  2. Add the chicken back to the pan.

  3. Add sherry, mushrooms, olives, and truffle pieces.

  4. Simmer gently for 45 minutes or until the chicken is tender.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish.

  2. Strain the sauce over.

  3. Garnish with mushrooms, olives, and truffle.

  4. Add fleurons or fried bread around the dish.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

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

  4. Sherry + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-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, which becomes tender through long gentle simmering in the sauce.
Salad oil
Conducts heat for frying the chicken, browning its surface and building flavour.
Espagnole sauce
Forms the rich brown base that coats the chicken and gives the dish its body.
Ripe tomatoes
Add acidity and sweetness to the sauce, balancing its richness.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Truffle
Contributes a strong earthy aroma to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken until browned. Browning through the Maillard reaction creates colour and savoury flavour on the surface. Pale, under-browned pieces will give a flat taste once simmered in the sauce.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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