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Maryland Chicken

A fried chicken dish topped with cream sauce, bacon, and corn fritters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Maryland Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut each chicken into 5 pieces and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Lightly roll the chicken pieces in flour.

  3. Dip the floured pieces in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in lard for 8 minutes on each side until golden brown.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the cream sauce in the center of a dish.

  2. Arrange the fried chicken in a crown shape over the sauce.

  3. Roll the bacon slices and arrange them around the chicken with corn fritters.

Make the cream sauce

  1. To make the cream sauce, melt butter, stir in flour, then gradually add hot milk and cream, seasoning to taste.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Spring chickens
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy when cooked through.
Eggs
Act as a binder that helps the bread crumbs stick to the chicken.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns during frying.
Flour
Dries the surface for coating and thickens the cream sauce with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the cream sauce as the base for the roux.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the coated chicken. Frying at a steady, moderate heat lets the crumb coating brown through Maillard browning while the chicken cooks through. Too hot and the coating darkens before the meat is done; too cool and the coating absorbs excess fat and turns greasy.

“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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