Chicken Marengo with Fried Eggs (1890)
Reader ratingsAgnes Marshall’s 1890 chicken Marengo with fried eggs: chicken with onions, bacon, tomatoes, sherry and brown sauce, served with the eggs and kite-shaped croûtons.
- Recipe makes
- 1 chicken, serving 4
- Prep
- Cook
- Total
The brown sauce takes about 45 minutes and can be made a day ahead; the chicken then needs about an hour.
Chicken Marengo with fried eggs and kite-shaped croûtons, on a white platter.
The story behind the recipe
The fried eggs are the news in this recipe. Agnes Marshall’s chicken Marengo, from Mrs. A. B. Marshall’s Cookery Book of 1890, fries a cut-up chicken with onions, bacon, tomatoes and herbs, simmers it in sherry and brown sauce, and piles it on a dish “with fried eggs, little kite-shaped croûtons.” Next to Gouffé’s plainer dish, it adds tomatoes and puts eggs on the plate.
A cookery-school Marengo
Agnes Marshall ran Marshall’s School of Cookery at 30 and 32 Mortimer Street in London, and her book advertises its lessons in its back pages. Her recipe came ninety years after the battle and a long way from a field kitchen: it calls for a pint of brown sauce kept ready in the larder and a tammy cloth to strain it through.
Set beside Gouffé’s 1868 version, it shows how far the dish moved in twenty-two years. Gouffé’s chicken fries with herbs and gets a sauce of flour and broth. Marshall’s fries with four onions, bacon and two or three tomatoes, then takes “a wineglass of sherry” and the brown sauce, and the eggs bring it a step closer to the legend. Was Chicken Marengo Really Cooked on the Battlefield? traces where that legend began.
Read more about this recipe
The brown sauce
Marshall’s brown sauce is one of her “standard sauces, which may always be kept in readiness,” browned with tomatoes from the start. We give it at a third of her quantity, which makes the pint this recipe needs. Make it the day before, and the chicken is an hour’s work.
Making it today
The tammy was a strong, fine cloth through which a sauce was forced; her book shows two cooks working it with wooden spoons. A fine sieve and the back of a ladle do the same job. Her “wineglass” of sherry was a small measure, about two fluid ounces. Her “salad oil” was a mild oil; any neutral oil will do for the croûtons, and the eggs fry in the same pan.
Sauted Chicken à la Marengo. (Poulet sauté à la Marengo.)
Pick, singe, and cleanse the bird, and cut it up in neat joints, then put it into a sauté pan with two tablespoonfuls of oil, four sliced onions, two ounces of bacon cut up in little square pieces, two or three tomatoes sliced and a bunch of herbs (thyme, parsley, and bayleaf); season all with pepper and salt and fry together for fifteen to twenty minutes, then add a wineglass of sherry, a small tablespoonful of flour, and a pint of brown sauce and cook for about half an hour, remove the joints, strain off the fat, and have a clove of garlic scraped and mixed with a tiny bit of butter, put it into the sauce and boil up, rub all the sauce through the tammy, add the joints of chicken to the tammied sauce, re-warm all together, dish it up in a pile, and garnish round with fried eggs, little kite-shaped croûtons that have been fried in salad oil, and a few sliced button mushrooms can be used if liked.
Brown Sauce.—Fry four ounces of flour, four ounces of butter, four ounces of tomatoes, till a good brown colour, then add two quarts of good-flavoured stock made from cooked meat bones; stir till it boils, and let it boil till reduced one fourth part, keeping it well skimmed; then, when quite free from fat, tammy.
Recipe makes: 1 chicken, serving 4
Ingredients
For 1 chicken, serving 4. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for 1 chicken, serving 4.
Brown sauce
- Butter1.25 oz
- Flour1.25 oz
- Tomato, chopped1.5 oz
- Beef or veal stock, unsalted or low-salt27 fl oz
Chicken
- Chicken , cut into eight pieces1Author measures: about 3 lb.
- Olive oil2 tbsp
- Medium onions, sliced4
- Slab bacon, cut into small dice2 oz
- Medium tomatoes, sliced3
- Thyme2 sprigs
- Parsley4 stalks
- Bay leaf1
- Salt3/4 tsp
- Black pepper1/4 tsp
- Dry sherry2 fl oz
- Flour for the chicken1 tbsp
- Garlic1 clove
- Butter for the garlic1 tsp
Garnish
- Eggs4
- White bread, about 1/2 inch thick2 slices
- Neutral oil for frying4 tbsp
- Button mushrooms, sliced (optional)2 oz
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 1.25 oz butter
- 1.25 oz flour
- 1.5 oz tomato, chopped
- 27 fl oz beef or veal stock, unsalted or low-salt
- 1 chicken (about 3 lb), cut into eight pieces
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 4 medium onions, sliced
- 2 oz slab bacon, cut into small dice
- 3 medium tomatoes, sliced
- 2 sprigs thyme
- 4 parsley stalks
- 1 bay leaf
- 0.75 tsp salt
- 0.25 tsp black pepper
- 2 fl oz dry sherry
- 1 tbsp flour for the chicken
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 tsp butter for the garlic
- 4 eggs
- 2 slices white bread, about ½ inch thick
- 4 tbsp neutral oil for frying
- 2 oz button mushrooms, sliced (optional)
Equipment
- Large sauté pan with a lid
Medium saucepan
Fine sieve
Frying pan- Warm serving dish
Instructions
Make the brown sauce. Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, stir in the flour and the chopped tomato, and fry, stirring often, for 10 to 15 minutes, until the mixture is an even nut brown.
Whisk in the stock a little at a time, bring to a boil, then simmer for about 30 minutes, skimming now and then, until reduced by about a quarter. Strain through a fine sieve.
Pat the chicken pieces dry. Put them in a large sauté pan with the olive oil, onions, bacon, sliced tomatoes, thyme, parsley stalks and bay leaf, and season with the salt and black pepper.
Fry over medium heat for 15 to 20 minutes, turning the chicken now and then, until it takes some color and the onions soften.
Add the sherry, sprinkle in the flour for the chicken, stir, and pour in the brown sauce. Cover and simmer gently for about 30 minutes, until the thickest part of the thigh reaches 165°F (74°C).
Lift the chicken onto a warm dish and keep it warm. Spoon or pour off the fat from the top of the sauce.
Crush the garlic to a paste with the butter for the garlic, stir it into the sauce and bring to a boil.
Press the sauce through a fine sieve with the back of a ladle, so the onions and tomatoes go through and the herbs and bacon stay behind. Return the sauce and the chicken to the pan and warm through. If using mushrooms, add them now and simmer for 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, cut the bread into kite shapes, long diamonds about 2 inches long. Heat the neutral oil in a frying pan over medium heat and fry the croûtons until golden on both sides. Drain them on paper.
Fry the eggs in the same pan until the whites are set.
Pile the chicken on a warm dish, pour the sauce over and around it, and set the fried eggs and croûtons around the edge.
Nutrition
880calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- 1 chicken, serving 4
- Servings
- 4
Estimated per serving (4) from USDA FoodData Central values for the listed ingredients, with the fat skimmed from the sauce left out.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
Scales by the chicken; allow one egg per person. The brown sauce scales on its own and keeps for several days in the refrigerator.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.
The brown sauce keeps for up to four days in the refrigerator. Marshall kept hers going by having it “boiled up once or twice a week.”
If your stock is salted, taste the sauce before adding any more salt; it reduces and concentrates.
Cook the eggs until the whites are firm. For young children, older people, pregnant people or anyone with a weakened immune system, cook them until the yolks are set too, or use pasteurized eggs.
Escoffier’s Chicken Marengo with Crayfish (1907) adds the crayfish.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; pan sizes and cooking times need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
After Mrs. A. B. Marshall, Mrs. A. B. Marshall’s Cookery Book (London, 1890), Sauted Chicken à la Marengo and Brown Sauce
Recipe details
- Course
- Main course
- Dish family
- Meat & Poultry
- Era
- 19th century
- Source decade
- 1890s
- Main ingredient
- Poultry & game birdsEggs
- Difficulty
- Intermediate
- Occasion
- Dinner party