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Chicken a LA King

Chicken a la King is a creamy chicken dish served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken into large pieces, about 2 inches long and 1 inch wide.

  2. Sprinkle the chicken with salt, white pepper, and paprika.

  3. Pour sherry over the chicken.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, cook the sliced onion in butter until light brown.

  2. Add flour to the onion and cook until smooth.

  3. Pour in the heated sweet cream and cook for 1 minute.

  4. Add the chicken and beaten egg yolk, stirring gently.

  5. Adjust seasoning with more salt, paprika, or sherry if needed.

Serve

  1. Serve on toasted bread slices.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 and bulk of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavor of the browned onion.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Sweet cream
Forms the body of the sauce and adds richness and moisture.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when heated but can scramble and curdle if the sauce is too hot. Stir gently and keep the heat low once it is added so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, chicken, sherry, onion, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, sherry, onion, butter, flour, cream. 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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