There are a lot of different versions of Chicken Marengo, which is generally chicken stewed in a tomato sauce with garlic and mushrooms. Some recipes call for the white wine and crayfish, which were supposedly in the original dish, while others have been dumbed down to canned tomato and mushroom soups.

Legend has it that Napoleon's cook, known as Dunand, created the dish to celebrate the 1800 French victory over the Austrians at the battle of Marengo in northern Italy.

Napoleon's custom was to eat nothing before a battle, but afterward, he was ravenously hungry. The cook was without the supply wagons, so he had to scrounge around to get a chicken, some crayfish, a handful of eggs, a few tomatoes and some garlic. The chef cut up the chicken and fried it with the garlic, adding the chopped tomatoes and some brandy from Napoleon's flask.

He fried a ration of army bread along with the eggs, and the cooked crayfish were served on the plate as a garnish.

The story goes that Napoleon liked this "victory dish" so well he wanted it prepared after every battle, and when Dunand later tried to substitute white wine for brandy, or delete the crayfish, Napoleon refused to eat it.

It's an inspiring, necessity-is-the-mother-of-invention tale for cooks who have to improvise with whatever they have on hand. Some historians have disputed the story, saying tomatoes wouldn't have been available at the time, or that this chef didn't work for Napoleon until five years after the battle took place.

Whatever. It's still a popular dish today, especially in Europe.

Lobster Thermidor

Lobster Thermidor is a classical dish where lobster meat is sliced, sauced and served in the lobster-tail shell. Although home cooks aren't likely to have this on their everyday menu, during the 1950s it had enough snob appeal to be served at top American restaurants such as Sardi's and the Waldorf-Astoria, as well as formal White House dinners, according to "Fashionable Food" by Sylvia Lovegren (University of Chicago Press, $19.99).

"Legend has it that Napoleon named Lobster Thermidor after the month in which he first was served it. Evidently Thermidor was the eleventh month of the Republican calendar used for a short time after the French Revolution," writes Emeril Lagasse in his book, "Emeril's Delmonico" (William Morrow, $29.95).

However, other food references — including the respected food encyclopedia, "Larousse Gastronomique" (Clarkson Potter, 2001), say it was created in 1894 at Marie's, a famous Paris restaurant. Other authors attribute it to Leopold Mourier of the Cafe de Paris, where chef Tony Girod, his assistant and successor, created the recipe used today.