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Chicken Saute a LA Marengo

Chicken pieces sautéed with mushrooms, tomato sauce, brown sauce, chives, and truffles, served with puff pastry croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Saute a LA Marengo

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the chicken

  1. Heat the salad oil in a stewpan and brown the chicken pieces for about 10 minutes.

  2. Pour away the oil, then add the mushrooms, tomato sauce, brown sauce, chives, and truffles.

  3. Cover the stewpan and place it in a 350°F (175°C) oven to simmer for about 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Arrange the chicken nicely on a serving dish and serve with puff pastry croutons.

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. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

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

  5. Chive + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 browns first and then turns tender as it simmers.
Mushrooms
Add savoury, earthy flavour and moisture to the sauce as they cook.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and sweetness, shaping the flavour of the braising liquid.
Brown sauce
Gives the braising liquid body and a deep, savoury richness.
Truffles
Contribute a strong, aromatic earthy flavour to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken. Searing the pieces in hot oil until golden builds browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale chicken added to the sauce yields a flatter, less savoury dish.

Swap the chive

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Chivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, truffle, mushroom, tomato, sauce. 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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