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Chicken a LA Marengo

A sautéed chicken dish with bacon, onions, wine, tomato sauce, mushrooms, lemon, herbs, and optional crayfish served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken a LA Marengo

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. Heat oil in a pan and test with a crust of bread.

  2. Sauté the chicken joints, adding the legs first for 5 minutes.

  3. Add chopped small onions and fine herbs. Cook until light brown.

  4. Drain excess oil.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare a sauce with mushrooms and lemon juice.

Plate and serve

  1. Arrange the chicken on a serving dish. Place delicate pieces on top.

  2. Surround with croutons and crayfish if available.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

  4. Wine + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Young tender chicken
Provides the main meat, which firms and browns as it cooks in hot oil.
Small onions
Become sweeter and more aromatic as they cook until light brown.
Button mushrooms
Add savory flavor and body to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity, sweetness and color to the dish.

The step that matters

Heat the oil before adding the chicken. Oil must be hot enough to sear the chicken quickly. If it is too cool, the joints absorb oil and turn greasy instead of browning well.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, wine, tomato, sauce, parsley, mushroom. 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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