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Chicken a LA King

Chicken à la King is a creamy chicken dish with peppers, egg yolk, 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: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken a LA King

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chicken

  1. Cut the white meat of the boiled chicken into thick slices or discs and place in a saucepan.

  2. Moisten the chicken with enough hot cream to cover it.

  3. Add the sliced red pepper, salt, and pepper.

  4. Simmer gently for about 15 minutes.

  5. Remove from heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the egg yolk with the cream, ensuring it does not boil.

  2. Stir in the walnut-sized piece of butter.

  3. Serve immediately over the 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

  3. Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

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

  4. Meat + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hot cream
Forms the sauce base and keeps the chicken moist as it gently cooks.
Egg yolk
Thickens the cream into a smooth, rich sauce when heated gently.
Sweet butter
Adds richness and a glossy finish to the sauce.
Sweet red pepper
Adds sweetness and colour to the creamy chicken.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. If the cream boils after the egg yolk goes in, the yolk proteins can scramble and the sauce turns grainy. Keeping it below a boil lets the yolk thicken it smoothly.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, chicken, cream, pepper, egg, butter):

  1. Walnutthe original
  2. Peanutfits about as well
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Sesamefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, cream, pepper, egg, butter. 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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