Skip to main content
Main

Chicken a LA Marengo

Rooster simmered with wine, tomatoes, mushrooms, parsley, onion, and garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Chicken a LA Marengo

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. Heat the sweet oil in a pot until very hot.

  2. Add the cut‑up rooster and minced garlic, browning the chicken well.

  3. Discard the oil and add the chicken to the butter in the pot.

Make the sauce and simmer

  1. Stir in the chopped parsley, onion, and garlic.

  2. Boil the white wine and pour it over the chicken.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, then add the strained tomatoes.

  4. Cover tightly and let it simmer slowly for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with fried eggs, fried mushrooms, and toast around the dish.

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. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Rooster
Provides the main protein, which firms as it cooks and browns for flavor.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the rich chicken.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid that help form the sauce as it simmers.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, supporting rich browning on the chicken.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness as it softens into the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken well. Deep browning creates Maillard flavors and color that the sauce builds on. If the pieces are crowded or wet, they steam instead of browning, leaving the dish pale and less flavorful.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, butter, egg, parsley, onion, wine, white wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, butter, egg, parsley, onion, wine, white 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes