Chicken A La King

Chicken a la King is an old fashioned recipe popular in the 1960s made with chicken, colored bell peppers, and mushrooms in a cream sherry sauce. 

The recipe began appearing in cook books and magazines into the 1970s.

This gourmet, delicious dish was served in many fine restaurants.

Almost everyone loves this dish. 

It is economical and pleases a crowd.

Chicken a la King makes a creamy, delicious and satisfying meal. 

Serve it over rice, mashed potatoes, Homemade Noodles or any other pastas.

If there are any leftovers, you can refrigerate them and reheat them for a meal the next day.

Or you can put them in a freezer container and freeze them. 

When you are ready to enjoy them at another meal, just remove them from the freezer, let them thaw out and heat them up to serve again. 

If you think you might not have left overs, you can double the recipe and freeze half of your meal today, saving precious time cooking dinner on another day.

Chicken A La King Recipe

• 2 tablespoons butter
  
  
• 1/4 cup green bell pepper, julienne cut* 
  
  
• 1/4 cup red bell pepper, julienne cut
  
  
• 2 tablespoons yellow or orange bell pepper, julienne cut
  
  
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  
  
• 1 cup chicken broth
  
  
• 1 cup milk
  
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
  
  
• 1/2 teaspoon rubbed sage
  
  
• 1/2 cup canned sliced mushrooms, with juice
  
  
• 2 cups cooked chicken breasts, cubed
  
  
• 1/3 cup sour cream
  
  
• 1/3 cup dry Sherry (I use Cream Sherry)
  
  

Melt butter in skillet on low heat.

Add bell pepper strips and saute until tender, about 8-10 minutes.

Remove peppers with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Add flour to butter in skillet and stir until all lumps are gone.

Slowly stir in chicken broth and milk.

Stir and cook until mixture is thickened to a thin gravy consistency.

Stir in salt, rubbed sage, and mushrooms.

Add chicken breast and cook until bubbly and thickened to a thick gravy consistency.

Stir in sour cream and dry Sherry.

Cook until hot and bubbly.

Remove from heat.

Serve hot over cooked hot noodles, rice, or mashed potatoes.

Old recipes suggested serving it on top of split, hot Homemade Buttermilk Biscuits.

*Julienne means to cut vegetables into small strips.

Usually they are cut on the diagonal.

For this recipe, cut the vegetable strips into about 1-1 1/2 inches long pieces.

Chicken A La King Notes

The original recipe for this dish used colored peppers.

Subsequent recipes used green peppers and pimento, which is a sweet red pepper.

That was probably because the colored peppers are seasonal.

Canned pimentos are available anytime and may be substituted for the red, yellow, or orange peppers.

The recipes for Chicken a la King that are in my cook books dating around 1947, listed egg yolks as an ingredient.

I believe the only purpose that egg yolks served was to give the sauce a yellow color.

The amber color of the Sherry does the same thing, plus it tastes better.

Cooking Sherry may be substituted for the dry Sherry.

The main difference in cooking Sherry and dry Sherry is the salt is added to cooking Sherry for seasoning.

If using it, adjust your salt in the recipe, accordingly.


For the chicken you may use dark meat instead of white meat or a combination of the two.

If you are going to cook your chicken, add additional flavor by adding a few celery leaves or celery pieces and a small chopped onion to the pot.

Also add 1/2 teaspoon salt.

This makes a tasty chicken and broth.

About 1 1/2 to 2 pounds uncooked chicken is required.

Desserts Pair Well
With Chicken A La King

The following Desserts are especially good for topping off your Chicken Pot Pie making your delicious dinner fit for a King or Queen;

Banana Pudding Recipe

Chocolate Pudding Pie Recipe

Cake Recipes Made From Scratch

Vanilla Wafers Recipe

History Of Chicken A La King Recipe

Several versions exist as to who developed this amazing, wonderful and delicious recipe.

One is that Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico created it in the 1880s.


Supposedly, he named it after Foxhall Parker Keene, calling it Chicken a la Keene.

Another account claims that chef George Greenwald of the Brighton Beach Hotel created it in 1898, naming it after a patron E. Clarke King II and his wife. 

He was not a King, but he was a chef.

Still there was another version which is William (Bill) King, a cook at the Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia, was given credit for it in many obituaries, even the New York Tibune when he died on March 4, 1915.

Plus, there are others who claim to have originated this great recipe.

Who really knows?

Related Pages

Biscuit Chicken Pot Pie Recipe

Chicken Alfredo Recipe

Chicken and Dumplings Recipe

Chicken Divan Recipe

Chicken Risotto Recipe

Smothered Chicken Recipe

Return to Chicken Recipes


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