Andrew F. Smith

Chicken Cookery: Chicken à la King

Appears in
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America

By Andrew F. Smith

Published 2004

  • About
There’s nothing royal about Chicken à la King, which is an entrée of cubed cooked chicken breast in a cream sauce that is dotted with pimento and mushrooms and often flavored with Madeira or a similar wine. An early claim for its invention appeared in 1915 in the obituary of William King, who had worked as a cook at Philadelphia’s fashionable Bellevue Hotel around 1895. King included truffles and red and green peppers in his recipe.

Under the more pedestrian name “creamed chicken,” similar recipes appeared in cookbooks beginning in the late nineteenth century. Peas are often added to the sauce in these recipes, and the sauced chicken is served over hot toast, biscuits, or waffles. The first located recipe titled “Chicken à la King” appeared in Paul Richards’s The Lunch Room (1911). The name quickly became popular, and the dish became a standard menu item in all kinds of restaurants, upscale and down, especially tearooms that catered to women, since this dish could be eaten in a most ladylike way without picking up a knife.