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Fried Chicken

Fried chicken with salt pork fat, served in a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Fry the fat slices of salt pork until the grease is extracted but not browned.

  2. Wash and cut up the chicken, then soak it in salt water for 30 minutes.

  3. Wipe the chicken dry, season with pepper, dredge with flour, and fry in the hot fat until rich brown.

  4. Set the chicken aside in a hot, covered dish.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Pour 1 cup of cream or rich milk into the pan with the remaining gravy.

  2. Thicken the mixture with 1 tablespoon of flour and 1 tablespoon of butter, then add a little chopped parsley.

  3. Boil the sauce and pour it over the chicken.

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. Pork + chickentop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through while its coating browns.
Flour
Coats the chicken so it browns crisply and thickens the cream gravy.
Cream or rich milk
Adds richness and body to the gravy, softening its flavor.
Salt pork
Supplies fat for frying and flavor carried into the chicken and gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the gravy thickened with flour.

The step that matters

Frying the floured chicken until rich brown. Flour-dredged chicken needs hot fat at a steady heat. Too low and the coating absorbs grease and turns soggy; too high and it burns before the chicken cooks through.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, chicken, pepper, flour, cream, butter. 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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