Chicken Marengo


Chicken Marengo is a French dish consisting of a chicken sautéed in oil with garlic and tomato, garnished with fried eggs and crayfish. The dish is similar to chicken à la Provençale, but with the addition of egg and crayfish, which are traditional to Chicken Marengo but are now often omitted. The original dish was named to celebrate the Battle of Marengo, a Napoleonic victory of June 1800.

History

According to a popular myth, the dish was first made after Napoleon defeated the Austrian army at the Battle of Marengo at Marengo south of Alessandria, Italy, when his chef Dunand foraged in the town for ingredients and created the dish from what he could gather. According to this legend, Napoleon enjoyed the dish so much he had it served to him after every battle, and when Dunand was later better-supplied and substituted mushrooms for crayfish and added wine to the recipe, Napoleon refused to accept it, believing that a change would bring him bad luck.
This colorful story, however, is probably myth; Alan Davidson writes that there would have been no access to tomatoes at that time, and the first published recipe for the dish omits them. The more plausible explanation for the origin of the dish is that it was created by a restaurant chef to honor Napoleon's victory.

Recipe

's recipe in his Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well is as follows :