This Old-School Chicken Dish Has Been Around Longer Than You'd Think, And Has A Murky Origin Story

The middle of the century was not kind to American cooking, or at least, we haven't been kind looking back on these old-school dishes. This was the time of Jell-o molds and tuna noodle casseroles, canned meat and vegetables covered in cream sauces, and the most expansive definition of "salad" ever conceived. The popular dishes of the '50s and '60s now mostly have a bad reputation, usually for embracing modern canned, powdered, and frozen ingredients that forewent freshness and flavor for affordability and convenience. But not every dish from this era was a modern creation, and there are plenty that deserve to be remembered. Salisbury steak is just an American version of the classic Hamburg steak, and can be very satisfying if actually made fresh. And if you've ever dismissed chicken à la king as nothing but a microwavable mess, think again.

There are actually mentions of French creamy chicken dishes "à la reine" (referring to the queen), going back centuries, but even the modern version of chicken à la king is over a century old. The dish first appeared sometime in the late 1800s but, while recipes were appearing in cookbooks by the 1890s, nobody knows for sure who actually created the dish or even why it's named "à la king." The most repeated story is that it was created at the Brighton Beach Hotel in New York and named after the hotel's owner, but that's just one of at least four different disputed origins for the chicken dish.

There are actually two different stories about chicken à la king that posit is was named after two different related people named Keene, and then the name evolved into the more appetizing sounding king. The first comes from famed New York hotel restaurant, Delmonico, where the chef supposedly took inspiration from the tastes of a famous horse breeder dining there named Foxhall P. Keene. The second comes from the Claridge Hotel in London, and was supposedly created for horse owner J. R. Keene, the father of Foxhall, who had just won a local race. However, an entirely new story emerged in 1915, when an obituary in the New York Times claimed the inventor of the dish was William King, who created it at the Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia where he was a cook.

Regardless of where it came from, by the later 20th century, chicken à la king had gone from a fancier restaurant dish with a brandy cream sauce to a cheap meal often using canned mushroom soup that was trotted out at buffets and catered meals. But make chicken à la king well with fresh ingredients, and you'll see why it endured for so long as a classic recipe. And if you share a homemade version with enough people, you might be able to erase the memories of countless mediocre versions and restore its reputation as an early American restaurant classic.