What started in the 1890s as an elegant dish served in the best restaurants became a middle class sensation by the 1950s. Chicken à la King is a quick, easy treat everyone will love. And it still radiates high-class style – while catering to convenience.
This classy classic is unbelievably easy, even when you don’t use the universal 50s shortcut – a can or two of cream of mushroom soup for the sauce! And we’re making this ‘casserole’ an even easier way – as a skillet concoction rather than an oven-baked dish, to keep it as authentic as possible…
Why ‘à la King?’
Good question… The short answer is, this dish was so popular when it first popped up about 130 years ago, that everyone who made it wanted to claim they invented it. There are many stories about chefs named ‘King’, favoured diners named ‘King’, and various European precursors which referred to chicken ‘in the style of a king’. More-reliable tales suggest this connection, which can be traced back to the mid 1660s, is the basis for the classic ‘marketing’ descriptor, ‘fit for a king!’.
But our 1950s version is a picture of elegant simplicity painted with just a few simple ingredients, combined in a time-honoured manner, and ready in under 1/2 hour…
What you need
The basis for this dish – and why it appealed so much in the 50s, is 3 cups / 750 g of cooked chicken. Chicken was the preferred every-day protein back in The Day, and there was always some leftover after a traditional Sunday Roast Chicken Dinner. The meat can be shredded or cubed, as you prefer.
Other ingredients include sliced mushrooms, green bell peppers, diced onions, green peas, chopped pimentos, butter, chicken stock and a dash of Worcestershire Sauce…
What you do
Sautée the mushrooms, onions and peppers together in 1/2 cup / 125 ml butter for a few minutes, until the peppers become fork-tender and the onions are transparent.
Add Salt and pepper. The recipe calls for 1 tsp / 5 ml salt and 1/4 tsp / 2.5 ml pepper. Be sure to taste for seasonings and adjust if necessary before assembling the casserole.
Then add 1/2 cup / 125 ml flour and whisk until completely combined with the melted butter. Simmer a couple of minutes more until the butter-flour mixture becomes creamy and just starts to bubble around the edges. You’re making a Roux, which will thicken the sauce.
Add the chicken stock and whisk gently until all the flour mixture is dissolved. Simmer a few more minutes, until the thick, creamy sauce develops.
Add the pimentos and chicken at this stage and gently stir in until the sauce has reached it’s ultimate thickness and the flour taste has cooked out.
Serve over rice, classic egg noodles, or puff pastry paté shells – the original ‘royal’ presentation.
Tips and hacks…
DO use ALL the butter specified. It ads a lot to the flavour of the dish, and helps make the sauce later in the procedure.
Use canned mushrooms and peas if you want to be totally authentic. But I prefer frozen peas, which I always have on hand, and fresh mushrooms.
DO use the pimentos as specified. They are a hallmark of this dish!
It’s traditional to add a dash or to of dry Sherry to proper Chicken à la King. But you can avoid the alcohol if you wish. One recipe I encountered in researching this post suggests a dash of Worcest-ershire Sauce…
My take
We’ve come full circle, on casseroles, in the past 70 years or so.
As in the 1950s, contemporary cooks value simplicity, easy prep and quick cooking times. Which is one reason casseroles are suddenly so relevant again!
Who among us didn’t enjoy Chicken à la King for supper at least a couple of times a month when we were kids? That’s another good reason to give this classic another turn on your kitchen stage…
~ Maggie J.