Chicken à la King, the Retro Dish that Deserves a Comeback (2024)

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Having grown up as the daughter of a professional chef (and a Dominican immigrant), there are certain classic, retro “American” dishes that I did not grow up eating. You know the ones: slumgullion, pot roast, things containing concerning amounts of gelatin, ambrosia salad, or anything that is called salad that doesn’t actually have lettuce.

Chicken à la king was one of those dishes for me. My boyfriend, on the other hand, is an all-American boy from Virginia who did a cartwheel at the idea of me putting my spin on one of his favorite recipes. His dad would cook chicken à la king for him as a kid, whose mother made it for him when he was a kid, whose mother made it for her when she was a kid—you get the picture.

I’ve since learned that eating chicken à la king is like wrapping yourself with a warm blanket. It’s a dish I now make regularly, especially on cold nights—it’s quick comfort food, done nearly as quickly as the pot of white rice I like to serve it with. It’s also wonderful with egg noodles or served alongside biscuits or warm toast.

What Is Chicken à la King?

The origin of chicken à la king’s name is a subject of debate. Some say it was created at New York’s Brighton Beach Hotel in the 1890s and named after its proprietor E. Clark King II. Some claim it originated in England, while others say it’s from Philadelphia.

Regardless of where it started, by the turn of the century, chicken à la king was everywhere. Records indicate that it appeared on roughly 300 menus from 1910 to 1960, but by the 1980s food writers seemed ready to pen its obituary.

As a relative newcomer, I say long live the king! Chicken à la king is creamy and luxurious but made with accessible ingredients: mushrooms, celery, peas, pimentos, a splash of sherry or white wine, cream, and chicken.

Key Ingredients and Substitutions

This version is made with cooked chicken and is a great way to use up leftovers. If you don’t have any leftover cooked chicken handy, this is a good opportunity to utilize America’s dinnertime hero, a grocery store rotisserie chicken. The chicken can also be swapped with large pieces of silken tofu (a silk blanket!), cooked turkey, or even canned tuna (for something akin to tuna casserole).

Two traditional ingredients I thought were important to include are sherry and pimentos. If you don’t have sherry on hand, white wine or Madeira work just as well. And if you’d rather skip the alcohol altogether, that’s totally fine.

Pimentos are commonly found in a jar or can, usually close to (and also stuffed inside!) the olives on grocery shelves. If you can’t track them down, a diced roasted red pepper works great too.

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