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Fried Chicken

A whole chicken coated in eggs and cracker crumbs, fried in lard, then finished in a butter, cream, flour, and parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Dissect and wash the chicken thoroughly.

  2. Rub the chicken with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Roll the chicken in beaten eggs and then in cracker crumbs.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the chicken in boiling lard until golden brown.

  2. Once cooked, pour off the lard.

  3. In the same pan, add butter, heavy cream, and flour. Stir in the chopped parsley and heat through.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 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. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs bind the cracker crumbs to the chicken so the coating holds during frying.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried in hot fat.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the cream sauce made in the pan.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and body to the pan sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cream sauce as it heats.

The step that matters

Frying the chicken in boiling lard. The lard must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating quickly; if it is too cool, the coating absorbs excess fat and turns greasy while the inside may stay underdone.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, egg, butter, cream, flour. 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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