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Parted Chicken

A fried chicken served with a milk and flour gravy, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Parted Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut up and wash the chicken, then wipe it dry.

  2. Roll the chicken pieces in flour and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Fry and make the gravy

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

  2. Remove the chicken and place it in a hot dish near the fire.

  3. In the frying pan, add 1 cup of milk and stir in 1 tablespoon of flour.

  4. Season the gravy with minced parsley, salt, and pepper, and let it boil once.

  5. Pour the gravy into a serving dish and garnish the chicken with curled 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. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 main protein; frying over high heat browns the flesh and crisps the coating.
Flour
Coats the chicken for browning and thickens the milk into a gravy.
Milk
Forms the body of the gravy, giving it creamy richness and a smooth texture.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and adds fat that promotes golden browning.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken in boiling lard until golden brown. The lard must be hot enough to brown the coating quickly. If it is too cool, the flour absorbs fat and the chicken turns greasy and pale rather than crisp.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, pepper, milk. 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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