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Fried Chicken with Cream

A dish of fried chicken pieces served with a cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Chicken and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,958 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Fried Chicken with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut up the chickens and season with salt, pepper, and flour.

Fry

  1. Fry until golden brown.

  2. Remove from heat and strain the grease to remove burnt pieces.

  3. Return the grease to the heat.

Make the cream sauce and serve

  1. Add the cream and let it simmer.

  2. If the sauce is not thick enough, add a little flour.

  3. Pour the cream sauce over the fried chicken.

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. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Flour
Coats the chicken and, when added to the cream, thickens the sauce.
1 cup cream
Forms the body of the sauce, adding richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Chickens
Provide the main protein, which browns and crisps when fried.

The step that matters

Straining the grease before returning it to the heat. Burnt bits left in the fat can turn bitter and dark, and they would carry that flavour into the cream sauce made from the same grease.

“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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