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Chickens, a LA Florentine

A sautéed chicken dish with ham, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and a wine glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Chickens, a LA Florentine

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. Season the chicken halves with mignonette pepper and salt.

  2. Heat the salad oil in a deep sauté pan.

  3. Add the chicken, garlic, parsley, and green onions.

  4. Add the parboiled ham or bacon, button onions, carrots, and mushrooms.

  5. Cook over moderate heat until the chicken is lightly colored.

  6. Pour off the grease.

Glaze and serve

  1. Add the Malaga wine and glaze.

  2. Simmer until reduced to a glaze.

  3. Toss the chicken in the glaze to coat.

  4. Dish up immediately, reserving the mushrooms to garnish.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the dish.
Salad oil
Carries heat evenly so the chicken browns and does not stick to the pan.
Raw ham or streaky bacon
Renders fat and adds savory, salty flavor to the pan.
Mushrooms
Release moisture and add earthy savory flavor as they cook.
Malaga wine
Adds sweetness and aroma, and its sugars help the sauce darken as it reduces.

The step that matters

Simmer until reduced to a glaze. Cooking off the liquid concentrates the sugars and thickens the sauce so it clings to the chicken. Too little reduction leaves it thin, and too long scorches the sugars and turns it bitter.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, garlic, ham, onion, carrot, mushroom, wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, garlic, ham, onion, carrot, mushroom, 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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