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Chicken a LA King

A creamy chicken dish with green pepper, mushrooms, and butter, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and chicken 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 a LA King

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the chopped green pepper and cook for about 5 minutes until the butter is browned.

  3. Stir in the flour and salt, cooking until frothy.

  4. Gradually add the cream, stirring until the sauce thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Set the pan over hot water and add the cooked mushrooms and chicken.

  2. Serve the mixture over toast.

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. Mushroom + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and carries the green pepper's flavor as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid and forming a starch network with the cream.
Cream
Forms the body of the sauce, becoming thick and smooth as it heats with the flour.
Cooked chicken
Provides the main protein, added at the end so it only needs to heat through.
Cooked mushrooms
Adds earthy flavor and a soft, meaty texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the cream while stirring. Adding cream slowly while stirring lets the flour disperse evenly in the liquid. Adding it all at once can form lumps that stay in the sauce, because flour starch clumps when it meets liquid before it can be wetted.

“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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