Chicken Marengo
hose whose happiness it is to enjoy this dish at the Congress may well be devoutly grateful to the intrepid chef of Napoleon who created it amid the roar of guns on one of the great battlefields of history.
On the eve of the battle, when the skirmish guns had already begun to boom, the emperor called for his favorite dish—chicken fried in butter. As it happened, the butter could not be found in the confusion, and Napoleon's "Minister of the Interior" was at his wit's end.
Then, inspired by the necessity of the occasion, the chef poured some fresh olive oil into the bottom of a casserole. In this the fowl, moistened with white wine, was sauted and then served with mushrooms and chopped olives—all in a rich brown gravy.
So exquisite was the dish that the emperor, after achieving a brilliant victory over the Austrians declared the culinary triumph should be known as poulet a la Marengo. Thereafter it was his favorite campaign dish and it is said that this reminder of his days of glory was one of his solaces at lonely St. Helena.
"Two things are essential in life—to give good dinners and keep well with women."
—Talleyrand