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Chicken a LA Marengo

A chicken dish simmered in a sauce of butter, flour, stock, lemon rind, herbs, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken a LA Marengo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the chicken and cut it into neat joints.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan over gentle heat.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the flour and stir well, then add the stock and stir until it boils.

  2. Add the lemon rind, mixed herbs, pepper, and salt to taste.

  3. Add the chicken and simmer slowly for twenty minutes.

  4. Beat the egg yolks, add them to the milk, and stir into the sauce.

  5. Reheat the sauce without boiling, then remove the lemon rind.

Serve

  1. Arrange the chicken in the center of a dish, pour the sauce over it, garnish as desired, and serve hot.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, cooked gently in the sauce so it stays moist and tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and starts the flour-based roux that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid as it cooks with the butter and stock.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and add body, thickening it gently when heated without boiling.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the sauce's flavor and texture.

The step that matters

Reheat the sauce without boiling. Once egg yolks are added, boiling can curdle the sauce. Gentle heat lets the yolks thicken it smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, butter, flour, lemon, egg, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, butter, flour, lemon, egg, milk. 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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