This Chicken May Be The Key To You Getting Engaged
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Gabriel Garcia Marengo
As spring beckons and the 2017 wedding season approaches, there is one infamous dinner recipe that deserves a little time in the spotlight: engagement chicken. Legend has it that this recipe is so profoundly delicious, you should be able to make it for your beau and leave the table engaged.
Okay, so what the heck is in this chicken?
First, some history: engagement chicken is a very light adaptation of another well-known chicken recipe, Marcella Hazan’s roast chicken with lemons. Hazan — a legendary cookbook author who became a leading authority on Italian cuisine — is responsible for one of the most classic roast chicken recipes ever: a small chicken seasoned thoroughly with salt and pepper inside and out, stuffed with a few small lemons, and roasted until the skin is crisp.
Hazan’s already notable recipe took on a new life when, in the words of NPR, a women’s magazine published the recipe and “got an overwhelming number of responses, including a large number from women who said, ‘I made this dish for my boyfriend and he proposed.'”
If you follow the trail, you’ll find that the magazine in question is Glamour, where, in 1982, then-fashion editor Kim Bonnell shared Hazan’s recipe with a coworker, who got engaged miraculously soon after making it for her boyfriend. As the recipe made its way around the office, more engagements reportedly followed, thereby establishing the mythos of this magical chicken. As Bonnell herself explained years later, she only meant to share an easy-to-prepare dinner recipe, but somehow the chicken took on a power of its own.
The next part of the engagement chicken story involves Howard Stern.
In 2004, Bonnell was summoned back to Glamour to resurrect the story of the engagement chicken and it was published in the magazine, where it caught the eye of Beth Ostrosky, then-girlfriend of Howard Stern. Hazan’s chicken (with tweaks from Bonnell like extra lemon juice) made such an impression on Stern that he talked about it during his show the next day. A listener called in to inform him of the chicken’s reputation, and Stern, who had previously pledged never to remarry, called his girlfriend on-air to confirm.
It took the couple two years to get engaged after this fateful dinner, so make of this legend what you will.
In Glamour’s official version, the recipe calls for several herbs — rosemary, sage, thyme, and parsley — though only as garnishes, and calls for one extra lemon. The last step instructs the cook to “pour the juices from the roasting pan on top of the sliced chicken,” dousing the chicken in “marry me juice.” Hazan, meanwhile, has no such instructions — the whole point of this dish is that it’s self-basting and relatively effortless — but do whatever you want with those juices. In Ina Garten’s version, the path to engagement is more complex — add onions, white wine, flour and olive oil. In Martha Stewart’s version, you should carve before serving and add another lemon for garnish — presentation is everything if you want to lock it down forever. And in case you were wondering, this recipe continues to have a pretty healthy social media presence, with its own Instagram hashtag and Wikipedia page and the frequently Googled question, “Does engagement chicken work?”
So there you have it — the story of engagement chicken. Does it seem ridiculous? Of course it does. But cooking for someone isn’t the worst way to make them fall in love with you, and this timeless recipe is a winner no matter what you call it. Just in case, here’s a link to that recipe one more time.
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