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Chicken a LA Marengo

A roasted chicken dish with tomatoes, mushrooms, wine, and herbs, served with fried toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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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.

  3. Brown the chicken well.

  4. Discard the oil.

Braise

  1. Add the chicken to the butter in the pot.

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

  3. Boil the white wine.

  4. Pour the wine over the chicken.

  5. Season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  6. Add the chopped tomatoes.

  7. Cover tightly.

  8. Simmer slowly for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with fried eggs and mushrooms.

  2. Serve with fried 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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Rooster
Provides the meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering in the pot.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and helps lift flavour from the browned pan.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity, forming the body of the sauce as they cook down.
Mushrooms
Add savoury depth and a meaty texture to the finished dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the flavour of the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Brown the chicken well. Browning creates deep flavour through the Maillard reaction on the meat's surface. Pale chicken yields a flatter sauce, so the pieces need time in hot oil and should not be crowded.

Swap the clove

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

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

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