Skip to main content
Main

Fried Chicken

A whole chicken is seasoned, fried, and served with a sauce made from flour, milk or cream, lard, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean, dress, and cut up the chicken.

  2. Roll the chicken in salt, pepper, and flour.

Fry

  1. Heat lard and butter in a skillet.

  2. Add the chicken and fry slowly for 1 hour or more until done.

  3. Transfer the chicken to a hot platter.

Make the cream sauce and serve

  1. Pour off most of the fat from the pan.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon flour to the pan and stir until smooth.

  3. Gradually add 1 cup milk or cream, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Stir well and pour the sauce 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

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

Flour
Coats the chicken and thickens the pan sauce when stirred with the fat.
Lard
Fat for frying that conducts heat evenly and browns the chicken's coating.
Butter
Adds richness and browning flavor to the frying fat.
Milk or cream
Liquid that, with the flour, forms the smooth, creamy pan sauce.

The step that matters

Frying slowly until done. Low, steady heat cooks the thick pieces through to the bone before the coating over-browns. Pulling the chicken too early leaves it underdone near the bone, while high heat burns the crust first.

“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.

More fried chicken recipes

with Tomato Sauce 6Italian 6Oven 6with Cream Gravy 5Virginia 5Marinated 4 See all 214 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes