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To Fry Spring Chicken

A fried young chicken served with a gravy thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Fry Spring Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Wash and dry the chicken.

  2. Dip the chicken in the beaten egg, then coat with seasoned cracker crumbs.

  3. Heat Crisco in a pan until very hot.

  4. Fry the chicken until browned on one side, then turn it over.

Cook through

  1. Add 1 cup of hot water and cover the pan.

  2. Cook steadily, adding water as needed until well done.

  3. Remove the chicken to a platter.

Make the gravy

  1. Add water to the pan to make one pint of gravy.

  2. Mix 2 tablespoons of flour with ½ teaspoon of parsley and 2 tablespoons of butter, then add to the gravy to thicken it.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Chicken + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,991 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Spring chicken
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it cooks through slowly in liquid.
Egg
Acts as a binder that helps the cracker crumbs stick to the chicken.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating when fried in hot fat.
Crisco
Conducts heat for frying and promotes browning of the coating.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells in the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Heat the Crisco until very hot before frying. Hot fat sets the egg and crumb coating quickly so it crisps and browns rather than soaking up grease and turning heavy. Starting with cool fat makes the coating greasy and prone to falling off.

“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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