Skip to main content
Main

Chicken a LA King

A creamy chicken dish with mushrooms, peppers, eggs, and cream, simmered in butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and mushroom 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

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 3 tablespoons of butter over medium heat.

  2. Add green pepper and mushrooms, cover, and simmer until tender.

  3. Mix flour, salt, and sweet milk until smooth and free of lumps.

  4. Transfer mixture to a double boiler and cook for about 10 minutes.

Combine and serve

  1. Add diced chicken, simmered vegetables, and chopped pimento to the cooked mixture.

  2. Stir in diced eggs, white pepper, and thick cream.

  3. Heat in the double boiler until boiling.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted fat that cooks the vegetables and gives the dish a rich flavor.
Flour
Thickens the milk and cream into a smooth, lump-free sauce.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the flour thickens.
Thick sweet cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce.
Fresh mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture as they soften in the butter.
Hard cooked eggs
Add body and richness to the finished creamy mixture.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and milk mixture until boiling. Flour must be fully dispersed and heated long enough to swell and thicken the liquid. If it stays lumpy or undercooked, the sauce will taste raw and have a pasty texture.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, milk, egg, cream, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes