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Chicken, Marengo
Singe, draw, cut off the head and feet at the first joint of a tender three-pound chicken, and cut into twelve as nearly even pieces as possible. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Thoroughly heat two tablespoons oil in a large frying pan, place the pieces in the pan, and briskly fry for six minutes. Drain off half the quantity of the oil. Add six finely chopped shallots, mix a little and cook for one minute. Then pour in half gill white wine, two gills tomato sauce; lightly mix, add twelve finely sliced, canned mushrooms, six thin slices of truffles, and let cook twenty minutes. Arrange the chicken on a hot dish, pour the sauce over. Garnish the dish around the chicken with six freshly fried eggs in oil, sprinkle half teaspoon chopped parsley over and serve.
A straightforward braise once the bird is cut up; the only fussy parts are the archaic liquid measures and the egg garnish, which needs to be cooked last and served at once.
- GillsA gill is half a cup. Half a gill of white wine is 1/4 cup; two gills of tomato sauce is 1 cup.
- Cutting into twelveTwo drumsticks, two thighs, two wings, and each breast half cut in three gives twelve roughly even pieces. Modern birds are sold drawn and singed, so ignore the first sentence and buy a 3-lb chicken cut up.
- Tomato sauceThis means a cooked, seasoned French tomato sauce, not ketchup and not raw purée. A cup of good passata simmered with a little stock, or a plain canned tomato sauce, is the right thickness.
- ShallotsSix shallots is a lot of allium for one chicken by modern taste; three or four medium shallots, finely chopped, is closer. Chopped shallots colour quickly in hot oil, which may be why the recipe holds them to a minute.
- TrufflesSix slices of truffle was a normal restaurant flourish when this was written and is a luxury now. Leave them out rather than substitute truffle oil; the dish stands on the wine, tomato and mushroom.
- Canned mushroomsCanned mushrooms were widely used when this was written. Fresh mushrooms, sliced and browned separately in a little oil before going into the sauce, are better and will hold up through the twenty-minute simmer.
- The twenty minutesTwenty minutes of gentle simmering will cook the thighs through but can dry the breast. Keep the pan at a bare simmer, covered, and pull the breast pieces first if they reach 165F early.
- The eggsFry the six eggs in oil in a separate pan while the sauce finishes, and set them around the platter at the last moment. They are the signature of the dish, not an optional garnish.
- YieldServes four generously, or six if the eggs are counted as part of the portion.
Chicken Marengo is traditionally traced to Napoleon's chef Dunand, said to have improvised it from foraged ingredients after the Battle of Marengo in June 1800 — a story repeated in nearly every cookbook that carries the recipe and documented in none of them. What is verifiable is the dish's shape in professional French kitchens by the later nineteenth century: chicken sautéed in oil rather than butter, finished with tomato, white wine and mushrooms, and garnished with fried eggs and, in the fullest versions, crayfish and fried bread croutons. The eggs and the oil are often read as the tell that this is a southern, campaign-kitchen idiom rather than a Parisian one, though that remains an inference. That an American book of this period includes canned mushrooms without comment while treating truffles as ordinary says a good deal about the gap between what its readers could buy and what its recipes assumed.