Today, we’re making a melty and cheesy chicken-focused sandwich that spends time baked in a fantastically rich sauce. And it just so happens I also made a new version of ciabatta to tuck that chicken, cheese, and sauce into. Keep reading to learn more about this fairly easy main course that I turned into a sandwich using a recipe that was passed around from kitchen to kitchen in the late 70s and 80s.
I took a deep dive into trying to discover the origin of this recipe, and while I uncovered more than the rest of the internet seems to be aware of, I don’t know if the truth will ever be fully known. If you’re into nerdy digs into cookbook research, keep reading. This might be the sandwich blog post for you. If you want to skip the nerdy cookbook details and get straight into the also nerdy sandwich ingredient discussions, you can jump down there if you’d like.
What is this sandwich?
My wife suggested I create this sandwich after we made one of my mom’s recipes for dinner. That particular dish is called Chicken Breasts Lombardy, and the version I use can be found in my mom’s cookbook (more on this below). The recipe produces tender pieces of chicken breast, topped with mushrooms, green onions, and two different cheeses, which are cooked alongside a lightly reduced chicken broth and Marsala wine sauce.
Chicken Lombardy is a dish that would typically be served as a main course on top of pasta or alongside side dishes like rice, mashed potatoes, and other vegetables, but I decided my wife was right and it would fit perfectly inside a slightly crusty ciabatta roll. So that’s what I did.
What is chicken Lombardy?
There are at least two types of chicken Lombardy recipes. There’s the version that has been shared and cooked by home cooks since the late 1970s or early 1980s, and then there’s what could be the original recipes. The sandwich you’re reading about today is not necessarily based on those original versions. But I have found two options for what might be the original recipe that I will share as we go along.
The chicken Lombardy that you can find recipes for on the internet in 2026 is a chicken and mushroom-focused Italian-American dish that’s clearly inspired by chicken Marsala. The recipe starts with sliced mushrooms and pounded flat pieces of chicken breast that are flour-dusted and seared in butter, but not fully cooked in a pan. Then the mostly cooked breast pieces are placed in a baking dish, topped with the sauteed mushrooms, while a sauce is created in the pan from the residual fond leftover from cooking the mushrooms and chicken, plus chicken stock and Marsala wine. That sauce is reduced and then poured over the chicken and mushrooms in the baking dish. On top of all of that goes shredded Fontina, grated Parmesan cheese, and sliced green onions. After everything is layered in the baking dish, the whole thing is baked until the cheese is melty and the chicken is fully cooked and flavored heavily by the Marsala sauce. It’s a great main course for a comforting dinner.
The main differences between chicken Marsala and chicken Lombardy are the additions of cheese and the baking process, which melts the cheese and finishes the dish. Chicken Marsala cooks fully in a skillet and includes no cheese.
Here’s my recipe for chicken Lombardy that varies only slightly from my mom’s recipe. I reduced the amount of chicken in my version, but you can easily double it if you’re feeding more than 4 people.
Chicken Lombardy
This super comforting dish should remind you of chicken Marsala but with a cheesy twist. The chicken is started in a pan to give it color, but finished simmering in sauce so that it remains tender and moist. Serve over pasta or as a main course beside mashed potatoes or rice.
Get RecipeWhat does chicken Lombardy have to do with Italy?
From my perspective, it’s not clear if the origin of chicken Lombardy has anything to do with Italy at all. After a bit of research, it does seem like this recipe was possibly invented in America.
A very loose by today’s standards recipe for chicken Lombardy appeared in the February 1940 edition of an American publication called House Beautiful. Before this, there are no indications that I could find of anything known as a dish called chicken Lombardy being made in Italy or the United States.
I spent some time digging and scrolling through the archive.org trove of House Beautiful issues from 1940 (it’s WILD in there) and was able to find a somewhat passable scan of the recipe that is referenced in a Yahoo.com article about chicken Lombardy. Unfortunately, the magazine scan seems to have been cut off on the left side, but it’s mostly readable. As I mentioned, this was in the February 1940 edition, and it’s in the Food and Drink Bar column that seems to be a staple in each issue. I’ve shared the cut-off screenshot that mentions chicken Lombardy and the restaurant and chef that originally shared the recipe.
Food and Drink Bar from House Beautiful, February 1940
Because the screen capture below from the magazine might be difficult to read, I have typed it below and have tried to insert any words that might be missing. I have tagged the missing *words* that I’m not 100% confident about with *asterisks*.
“We like to lunch in the quiet paneled dining room of the Hotel Lombardy. We like the smiling courtesy of Maitre d’Hotel René and the food which comes out of Werner Haechler’s kitchen. This able *chef* has been trained at many of the great hotels of his country and *arrived* to his present proud post via Paris and London. There is a nice *combination* of honesty and delicacy in all he does. You eat hearty and *will find* he has made the Hunt Room’s Sunday morning breakfasts a thing that all New Yorkers adore. Here is one of his recipes which *unsure?* Hilda, or you, could make for a party without becoming fussed. It’s not difficult and it has real distinction.
Breast of Chicken Lombardy. Sauté a breast of chicken slowly in *warm* butter, for about twenty minutes, not allowing it to brown. Then *stage* it on a bed of very fine noodles and cover it with mushroom. Add a little flour to the butter in which it was sautéd. Let this *simmer* for a few minutes, then add a cup of chicken broth. After the *sauce* has boiled down to a good rich thickness, strain it and add a *half?* cup of whipped cream. Mix well and pour over the breast of *chicken*. Put it under the broiler for a minute to get brown. Add a slice *of truffle* for decoration and behold! sensation.”
So, we’ve learned that the possible origin of chicken Lombardy didn’t come from Italy; it came from a restaurant in a hotel in New York City that was named after the Lombardy region of Italy. With that covered, what we don’t know is whether Chef Werner Haechler based his recipe on dishes that might have their origin in Lombardy.
Haechler’s chicken Lombardy recipe does not contain any wine or cheese, which makes it quite different from the chicken Lombardy recipe that was submitted to Southern Living magazine at some point before 1982 by a reader (Joe Broussard of Lafayette, Louisiana). That recipe ended up being published in their 1982 annual recipe collection, and it is similar but not quite the same as the recipe my mom cooked for our family growing up.
Werner Haechler, chef at the Lombardy restaurant, is widely credited with introducing Sunday brunch to NYC. The concept of brunch was technically invented by an English writer in 1895, but it was at the Hotel Lombardy where Sunday brunch was first introduced to New Yorkers.
So it’s clear that the history of chicken Lombardy is a little bit murky. We sort of know where the dish might have originated, but we don’t know if it’s inspired by the Lombardy region of Italy or just named after the Hotel Lombardy in NYC. There’s no Wikipedia entry for chicken Lombardy, but there is an entry for Lombard Cuisine.
If you skim through that Wikipedia entry, you’ll learn that the food from Lombardy leans heavily on dairy since about 40% of Italy’s national production of beef takes place in that part of the country. Partially because of the climate, in the north of Italy, butter is much more commonly used than it is in the south, where olive oil is the primary fat used to sear meats and veggies. But it makes sense to think that some of that butter and cream usage could also be due to the number of cows in the region.
Lombardy is the largest producer of milk in Italy with about 40% of the national production, and one of the regions with a greater variety of cheeses.
Wikipedia – Lombard cuisine
Due to the proliferation of cows, Lombardy is also a big area for cheese production. The original chicken Lombardy from the Hotel Lombardy did not have cheese, but it did have whipping cream, and the more modern version of the chicken Lombardy recipe is cheese-focused, so both seem to be respecting the characteristics of cuisine from that region of Italy. The northern parts of Italy, of which Lombardy is a part, were and are known for using butter over olive oil as well, which fits perfectly with the cooking practices in chicken Lombardy recipes.
The only indication that a dish known as chicken Lombardy might have come from Italy is from a cookbook published in 1963 called The Art of Regional Italian Cooking, which was written by an Italian-American named Maria Lo Pinto, and it seems to be written for the American audience. In the section for Northern Italian dishes, she has a recipe for Chicken Lombardy Style (Pollo alla Lombardia), which seems to be quite different from the Hotel Lombardy version.
Maria Lo Pinto’s recipe differs from both the current chicken Lombardy recipes that are all over the internet and the recipe published in House Beautiful, but it does start with cooking the chicken in butter and olive oil, which tracks when you’re thinking about the culinary practices of Lombardy. There are no mushrooms, cream/dairy, or mention of Marsala wine in the recipe, so it’s sort of hard to tell if they would have any similarity in flavor.
Knowing what we now know after doing this little bit of research on cookbooks on archive.org, I’m left wondering if Chef Werner Haechler was aware of a regional chicken dish from Lombardy and adapted it to his menu at the Hotel Lombardy. Maybe there actually was a Lombardy-style chicken dish that originated in Italy, and this dish isn’t just a made-up American thing? I’m not sure if we’ll ever really know, but the dish of chicken Lombardy as it stands now has transformed into something totally different from what might have been originally made in Italy or New York.
Did Olive Garden invent it?
Short answer: no. Long answer is: also no.
In 2014, the international Italian-themed restaurant chain Olive Garden released its own version of Chicken Lombardy as part of its Tour of Italy promotion. Their’s is quite different from all the other versions I’ve covered so far.
Olive Garden was late to the chicken Lombardy game, so we can’t give them any credit for the invention, even though there are people who think this is the origin.
Where did my chicken Lombardy recipe come from?
My version of chicken Lombardy came from my mom’s cookbook. She gathered family recipes together in the early 2000s, organized them into sections, and had them printed into a spiral-bound cookbook so that family members would have a collection of the recipes that we all grew up with. After she printed them, she gave them out to friends, and she specifically gave my sister and me a stack of copies that we could give out to our friends, but I’ve made sure to keep at least one copy in a safe drawer as a backup. Because, as you can see, this cookbook clearly gets used in my house.
I’m not totally sure where my mom got the inspiration for her chicken Lombardy recipe. She’s been cooking it for at least 40 years at this point. It possibly could be an alteration of the Southern Living recipe, or it could be a recipe she got from a friend. We will likely never know, but it’s definitely a good recipe that we’re going to turn into a sandwich.
Now that we know what sandwich we’re making, we need to make some bread.
Green onion and Parmesan ciabatta
Since chicken Lombardy is an Italian-style dish, I felt it made sense to use Italian-style bread. I also wanted something that was a little bit crusty, so it would stand up to the tender chicken, melty cheese, and sauce. I chose ciabatta, but I ended up using two components that would match what is in my chicken Lombardy recipe.
This is my usual ciabatta roll recipe that I’ve shared many times in a lot of different sandwich variations. But as you can tell from the name of the roll recipe, there are two additional ingredients added to the dough.
You could mix in the cheese and green onions when you’re mixing up the dough, but I felt it made sense to fold them in after the initial rise time. This allowed me to get the green onions and cheese mixed into the dough, and the folding process could also give the dough a bit more structure.
Once it was folded around the onions and cheese, I let the dough rest for 15 minutes, and then I rolled and flattened the dough into a large rectangle and cut it into 6 equal-ish-sized pieces. I have some graphics with measurements in the full green onion and ciabatta roll recipe that will help you with the cutting and size options.
Since it seems like good practice to display on the exterior of the roll what is also inside the roll, I reserved a small amount of shredded Parmesan cheese and green onion to sprinkle on top of each roll.
Here’s my new green onion and Parmesan cheese ciabatta roll. If you didn’t want to make your own roll for this sandwich, you can use all sorts of rolls that you can find at the store. Maybe you could try a French roll or even whatever sort of 6-inch style sub roll that you can find at your local store.
Green onion and Parmesan ciabatta rolls
This recipe creates light and airy rolls with a fun oniony and savory Parmesan flavor. The outer crust is a bit crunchy and cheesy, but these rolls have a good bite that works out great in a sandwich.
Get RecipeChicken Lombardy
If you skipped all the content at the top of this blog post, you might have missed that the chicken Lombardy recipe I am using is a modern interpretation of the recipe and not the original recipe. This version is more akin to chicken Marsala than just chicken and mushrooms in a cream sauce. I’m going to cover the ingredients in the order in which they are used in my full recipe.
Mushrooms
The first thing that’s cooked in the chicken Lombardy process is the mushrooms. They are simply sauteed in butter until they soften just a little. This should take between 5 and 7 minutes or so. You do not want them to be super soft because they will cook just a bit more during the baking process later in the recipe.
Once the mushrooms are softened and they’ve absorbed the fat from the butter, it’s time to move them to a bowl to rest while you cook the chicken.
Chicken breasts
My mom’s recipe for chicken Lombardy specifically states breasts in the name of the recipe. As in most chicken-focused recipes, you could substitute thigh meat if you wanted; you’re just going to have to be responsible for your own cooking timing because I’ve only made this one with breast pieces.
The first thing you need to do with the chicken breasts is to butterfly and separate each breast into two pieces. I have struggled with creating a good video or GIF explaining the chicken butterflying process, but I have shared one here that should show what you need to know about how to cut a chicken breast into two, thinner cutlets. Butterflying isn’t hard; it’s just difficult to describe.
Both my mom’s recipe and the Southern Living recipe for chicken Lombardy tell you to pound the chicken filets into 1/8th inch thick pieces of meat. I’m not sure who came up with this thickness, but it’s way too thin; it’s not really possible. A quarter-inch thick is about as thin as you can pound a piece of chicken without destroying it, so that’s the measurement I use in my recipe.
The chicken breast pieces in this dish are seasoned with salt and pepper and then coated in flour and seared in butter. This process is meant to get a bit of browning on the exterior of the meat, and the goal is not to cook the chicken all the way through because the finished dish goes into the oven, which ensures the thin cutlets are cooked to temperature.
My recipe for chicken Lombardy calls for 2 large chicken breasts that are cut into two cutlets each. After the cutlets are pounded somewhat thin, they will probably not all four fit into a large pan. This means you should cook the cutlets in batches, adding 1 tablespoon of butter before each batch cooks. This may sound like a lot of butter, but it mostly cooks off in the pan, and there’s not a lot of butter left in the pan when each batch of cutlets is finished cooking.
When the chicken finishes cooking, the cutlets are added to a 9 x 13-inch baking pan and then topped with the fully cooked mushrooms while you whip up the Marsala sauce.
Marsala sauce
Marsala is a fortified wine much like sherry or port. It’s primarily produced on the west side of the island of Sicily and is protected by DOC (Denominazione di Origine Controllata), meaning it can only be called Marsala if it is made from the proper geographic region.
The Marsala DOC is recognized by the European Union, but apparently, it’s not a thing in the United States because the version of Marsala that I used in this recipe is from New York (insert the Texas salsa commercial with the guy yelling “New York City?”).
Marsala wine will bring a bit of sweetness and just a touch of tanginess to the finished chicken Lombardy. If you’ve ever had chicken Marsala, you’ll know what to expect from the sauce here.
The Marsala and a little bit of chicken stock are added to the hot pan that just cooked the chicken. This will clean up some of the residual fat and leftover browned chicken bits from the bottom of the pan, which helps to flavor the sauce and also reduces the liquid, thickening it. The Marsala sauce will not be super thick; it just needs to simmer for a short period of time and reduce just a little bit before it’s added into the baking dish with the chicken and mushrooms.
Two cheeses and green onion
The toppings on top of the chicken and mushrooms that change this whole recipe from being chicken Marsala into chicken Lombardy are two different cheese options and sliced green onions. The recipe my mom shared with me tells you to combine the two cheeses and the green onions into a bowl and use that to spread on top of the chicken. I don’t see why you really need to combine the three items, because they could just be spread on top in even layers, but in the recipe I wrote, I still stuck with the tactics from the original.
Combine the two cheeses and the sliced green onions in a bowl and use that to sprinkle on top of the chicken, mushrooms, and sauce in the baking dish, and prepare for things to get all melty in the oven.
Now that we have all the ingredients, some of them cooked, some of them partially cooked, we need to build everything in a baking dish for finishing in the oven.
Chicken Lombardy build and bake process
Once everything is cooked, you need to build the chicken Lombardy in a baking pan. Here’s a very simple gallery of photos that should explain the layers and ingredients used.
Chicken Lombardy sandwich photos and recipe
I ate this sandwich four times in the past week and took a whole bunch of photos, as you can see if you keep scrolling. Check them out and read all the captions that I sometimes have to struggle to come up with.
The full chicken Lombardy recipe is just below the photos. Try it in your own kitchen and let me know how it works out!
Chicken Lombardy sandwich
This comforting sandwich is made from tender chicken cutlets, butter-sauteed mushrooms, and two types of melty cheese that have been cooked in a savory, slightly sweet Marsala sauce. Time to find a nice crusty roll and get down to business.
Ingredients:
Chicken Lombardy- 2 large, boneless, skinless chicken breasts
- salt and black pepper
- 1⁄3 cup all-purpose flour
- 3 tablespoons butter (divided and used 3 times)
- 1 cup mushrooms, sliced
- 3⁄4 cup Marsala wine
- 1⁄2 cup chicken broth or stock
- 1⁄4 teaspoon salt
- 1⁄4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1⁄2 cup Fontina cheese, shredded (can use low-moisture mozzarella)
- 1⁄2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
- 1⁄4 cup green onions, sliced
- 4 five to six-inch bread rolls (I used my green onion and Parmesan ciabatta recipe)
- mayonnaise or Dijon mustard (optional)
- 4 chicken Lombardy cutlets (from above)
- residual Marsala sauce (from above)
Directions:
Prepare chicken: butterfly the chicken breasts and cut each one into two cutlets. Working one at a time, place each chicken cutlet between 2 sheets of heavy-duty plastic wrap or a plastic freezer bag, and using a mallet, flatten each cutlet to 1/4 inch thickness.
Salt and pepper both sides of each chicken cutlet. Add the all-purpose flour to a bowl or plate and dredge each chicken cutlet lightly in flour on both sides.
Allow the chicken to rest while you cook the mushrooms.
Mushrooms: add one tablespoon of butter to a large pan over medium heat. When the butter is melted and bubbly, add the sliced mushrooms and cook for about 5 to 7 minutes until the mushrooms are softening. Remove the mushrooms to a bowl to be used later.
Chicken: add a tablespoon of butter to the large skillet that you used to cook the mushrooms. When the butter is melted, add two of the flour-dusted cutlets to the pan. Cook over medium heat for 3 minutes on each side or until the exterior is lightly browned. The goal is to get a little color on the chicken. You do not have to cook it all the way through at this stage because it will go in the oven to finish cooking. Cook the cutlets in two batches, adding 1 tablespoon of butter to the pan before each batch. When a batch of cutlets has completed cooking, move them to a 13 x 9 baking dish and arrange each cutlet in one layer on the bottom of the pan. Do not wipe out or clean the pan between batches.
Once all four of your cutlets are in the baking pan, sprinkle the reserved mushrooms over the chicken.
Marsala sauce: add the Marsala wine and chicken broth to the reserved pan drippings in the skillet. Bring to a boil; reduce the heat, and simmer, uncovered, for about 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add salt and pepper, and make sure to scrape the bottom of the pan to loosen any residual chicken fond into the sauce.
Preheat the oven to 375 F (190 C).
After the Marsala sauce has reduced a little, pour the sauce evenly over the chicken and mushrooms arranged in the baking dish.
Combine Fontina and Parmesan cheeses and green onions into a small bowl, and sprinkle evenly over the chicken and mushrooms.
Bake, uncovered, for 15 minutes.
Sandwich assembly: slice your bread rolls and add whatever condiments you would like to the bottom part of the roll.
Using a spatula, move each chicken cutlet, covered with melty cheese, on top of the bottom part of each roll you plan to serve.
Place both the chicken side of the bread roll and the top of the roll open-faced on a sheet pan and place under a broiler set on high for 1 to two minutes. This will toast up the inside top of the roll as well as brown the chicken and cheese, and make sure everything is nice and warm. If you do not have a broiler, you can keep the oven at the temp it was when you baked the chicken Lombardy and cook in the oven for about 5 minutes to toast the bread lightly.
Remove the sheet pan from the oven and drizzle some of the leftover Marsala sauce from the baking dish onto the cut side of the inside top of each roll to add a bit of moisture to the finished sandwich. Close the rolls and serve.
Check back next week
Next week, the sandwich blog is travelling to California by way of all the diners and sandwich shops across America. Grab your plane ticket and let’s go!
