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Virginia Fried Chicken

A fried chicken dish with a creamy parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Virginia Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Dredge the cut-up chicken pieces in flour and sprinkle with salt.

  2. Heat a good quantity of boiling lard in a frying pan.

  3. Fry the chicken until it is a light brown.

  4. Fry small pieces of mush and picked parsley until nicely browned.

Make the cream sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk or cream, butter, pepper, salt, and parsley.

  2. Stew the mixture briefly and pour it over the fried chicken.

  3. Garnish with additional parsley before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat, which is browned in lard to form a crisp, golden crust.
Flour
Forms a dry coating on the chicken that browns and crisps during frying.
Milk or cream
Makes a rich, smooth sauce that moistens the fried chicken.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cream sauce.
Lard
Fries the chicken, transferring heat and producing a browned, crisp surface.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken until light brown. Frying at a steady, hot temperature browns the flour coating and cooks the meat through. Too little heat leaves the coating pale and greasy, while too much browns the outside before the inside is cooked.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, milk, butter, pepper):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, milk, butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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