Chicken à la King

History

• One claim is it was created by Delmonico's chef Charles Ranhofer as Chicken à la Keene in the 1880s, named after Foxhall Parker Keene.
• Another version claims it was created in 1881 at Claridge's Hotel in London and named for James R. Keene, father of Foxhall.
• Another account claims chef George Greenwald of the Brighton Beach Hotel in Brighton Beach created it in 1898, naming it after patron E. Clarke King II and his wife.
• Another account is that chicken à la King was created in the 1890s by hotel cook William "Bill" King of the Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia. Several obituaries in early March 1915 credited King after he died on March 4, 1915. A New York Tribune editorial at the time of King's death stated:

  The name of William King is not listed among the great ones of the earth. No monuments will ever be erected to his memory, for he was only a cook. Yet what a cook! In him blazed the fire of genius which, at the white heat of inspiration, drove him one day, in the old Bellevue, in Philadelphia, to combine bits of chicken, mushrooms, truffles, red and green peppers and cream in that delight-some mixture which ever after has been known as "Chicken a la King."