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Virginia Fried Chicken

A fried chicken dish from Virginia with a peppered flour coating and a milk gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Virginia Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season flour with pepper and dip each chicken piece into it.

  2. Cook slices of salt pork in a frying pan until the fat is rendered, then remove the pork.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the chicken in the rendered fat for 20 minutes if young, longer if older.

  2. Remove the chicken and keep warm on a platter.

  3. For the gravy, stir 1 cup of milk mixed with 1 tablespoon of flour into the fat.

  4. Once thickened, pour the gravy 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. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

  2. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  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. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 meat that is fried until cooked through and browned in the rendered fat.
Flour
Forms a seasoned coating that crisps and browns on the chicken as it fries.
Salt pork
Renders fat that the chicken fries in, adding savory flavor to the coating and gravy.
Milk
Mixed with flour and stirred into the fat, it thickens into a creamy gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken for the stated time. Frying at a steady heat cooks the chicken through while the coating browns. Older birds need longer because their meat is tougher and takes more time to become tender and fully cooked.

“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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