Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Fried Chicken
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the chicken
Season the chicken pieces with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Roll each piece in fine bread crumbs.
Dip the breaded chicken in the beaten eggs.
Roll in the bread crumbs again.
Fry and serve
Heat the fat until hot enough to brown a piece of bread in 1 minute.
Fry the chicken pieces for about 10 minutes until cooked through.
Serve with sauce tartare or cream sauce, garnished with sprigs of parsley.
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.
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,258 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).
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Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,958 recipes
Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
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Chicken + eggtop 30% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,991 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Chicken
- Provides the main protein, which cooks through during frying while the coating crisps.
- Fine bread crumbs
- Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot fat.
- Eggs
- Bind the bread crumbs to the chicken so the coating adheres during frying.
- Fat for frying
- Conducts heat to brown the coating and cook the chicken through.
The step that matters
Heating the fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisp. The bread-browning test in the record checks that the fat is hot enough before the chicken goes in.
“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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