Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
chicken Marengo

chicken Marengo

5.6
A dish of chicken cooked with onions and mushrooms in wine and tomato sauce
  • noun
  • /ˈtʃɪkɪn məˈrɛŋɡoʊ/
translation icon : pollo Marengo
  • For dinner, we enjoyed chicken Marengo with a rich tomato sauce and mushrooms.

Examples

  • At the restaurant, I ordered chicken Marengo, which was served with a flavorful wine sauce.

  • The recipe for chicken Marengo includes braised chicken, fresh onions, and a splash of white wine.

  • Chicken marengo.

    Corrina, Corrina (1994)

How Saucy

chicken Marengo
5.6
chicken stew
1 1.0

Surface Forms

chicken Marengo singular
chicken Marengos plural

Morphology

chicken + Marengo

The compound signals a chicken dish so a B1 learner who knows 'chicken' will grasp that this is a food made from chicken, but 'Marengo' is a proper name/place with no lexical clue to the cooking method or ingredients. The specific preparation (braised with onions, mushrooms, wine and tomato) is not predictable from the constituents, so the phrase is only partially transparent.

Etymology

Chicken Marengo may come from a quick meal made for Napoleon after the Battle of Marengo. One popular story says the chef used what he had—chicken, tomatoes, onions and wine—to feed the troops, so the name now means 'a chicken dish cooked with tomato and wine'.