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Chicken Maryland

Chicken Maryland is a fried and baked chicken coated in flour, egg, breadcrumbs, served with a cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Maryland

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fowl

  1. Prepare the fowl by splitting it down the back and removing the gills if small, or disjointing if large.

  2. Season the fowl with salt and pepper, then coat with flour.

  3. Dip in a mixture of beaten egg and cream, then dust with breadcrumbs.

Fry and bake

  1. Heat clarified butter in a pan and fry the chicken slowly, turning frequently until it is a dark yellow color, about 15 minutes.

  2. Transfer the chicken to a covered dish and place in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 10 minutes.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In the same pan, make a cream sauce by mixing 2 tablespoons of flour with the remaining butter, then add 1 pint of cream and milk, seasoning with salt and pepper. Do not make it too thick.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Fowl
Provides the main meat, which cooks through during slow frying and gentle oven finishing.
Flour
Dries the surface and gives the egg and breadcrumb coating something to grip.
Egg
Binds the coating so the breadcrumbs stick and form a crisp crust.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust during frying.
Cream and milk
Make the sauce rich and smooth, with the flour thickening it.

The step that matters

Frying the chicken slowly. Slow frying over moderate heat lets the thick pieces cook through while the coating browns evenly. Too high a heat burns the crust before the meat is cooked inside.

“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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