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Southern Fried Chicken

Chicken is boiled, coated in peppered flour, fried, and served with a gravy made from flour and chicken stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Southern Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Wash and disjoint the chicken.

  2. Boil the chicken in water until tender.

Fry and serve

  1. On a plate, sprinkle flour with pepper and roll the chicken pieces in it.

  2. Heat butter and lard in a frying pan.

  3. Fry the chicken until browned on both sides.

  4. Place on a platter and pour over gravy made from flour moistened with water and chicken boiling liquid.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 meat, which is tenderised by boiling before frying.
Flour
Forms a light coating that browns during frying and thickens the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the frying fat and browning.
Lard
Gives a high-heat frying fat that browns the coating crisply.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken until browned on both sides. The coating must be fried in hot fat long enough to brown. Pale or greasy coating means the fat was not hot enough or the pieces were crowded, so the crust does not set properly.

“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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