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Chicken a LA King

A chicken dish with vegetables, cream, and flour, served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken a LA King

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cook the chicken in water until tender, then cool and cut into cubes.

Make the sauce

  1. In the chicken broth, cook the diced carrots, chopped celery, and chopped peppers or mangoes until tender.

  2. Thicken the mixture with cream and flour, then let it boil.

  3. Add the chicken back into the pot and cook again.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on triangles of buttered toast, using paprika if desired.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + mangotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together471 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Carrot + mangotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream and broth into a smooth sauce that coats the chicken.
Chicken
Provides the main protein, cooked tender and cut into cubes for the dish.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with cream and flour, then let it boil. Flour must be fully incorporated and the mixture brought to a boil so its starch swells and thickens the sauce. Undercooked flour leaves a pasty, raw taste and a thin sauce that won't cling to the chicken.

Swap the mango

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, carrot, celery, pepper, cream, flour):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Mangothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, celery, pepper, cream, flour. 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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