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Fried Chicken

Fried chicken cooked slowly in butter or drippings, then finished in oven, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Fry the chicken

  1. Dust the chicken pieces with salt and pepper.

  2. Melt the butter or drippings in a saucepan over low heat.

  3. Add the chicken pieces, cover, and cook slowly until well done and browned.

  4. Turn the chicken and cook the other side in the same way.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the chicken to a hot platter, add bits of butter, and place in the oven for a moment.

  2. For gravy, add hot water to the saucepan, simmer for a few minutes, and thicken with browned flour.

  3. Garnish with cress or parsley.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Chicken
Provides the meat that is cooked through and browned in the fat.
Butter or clarified drippings
Fat for frying that browns the chicken and carries flavour into the pan.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy as it simmers with the hot water.

The step that matters

Cooking the chicken slowly over low heat until well done and browned. Low, slow heat with a covered pan cooks the thick pieces through to the bone without scorching the fat or the coating. Turning the pieces lets both sides brown evenly.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, butter, 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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