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Fried Chicken

A chicken dish where pieces are boiled, floured, browned, and served with a gravy made from the cooking liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the skin from the chicken pieces and place them in a pot of water.

  2. Add a little coarse sea salt and boil until almost done.

  3. Roll each piece in flour and sprinkle with black pepper and salt.

Bake and finish

  1. Place the chicken in a pan.

  2. Add a small lump of butter to each piece.

  3. Add enough boiling water to baste the chicken.

  4. Once browned, make a gravy with the boiling liquid, a little flour, and the beaten egg.

  5. Pour the gravy over the chicken.

  6. Return the chicken to the oven for a few minutes before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Provides the main protein; boiling first cooks the meat through before browning.
Flour
Forms a coating that browns and helps the gravy thicken.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the chicken brown and carrying flavour during basting.
Egg
Adds body and richness to the gravy, helping it thicken and bind.

The step that matters

Boil until almost done. Boiling cooks the chicken through before browning. If it is boiled too long it may fall apart, and if too short the inside may stay underdone after frying in the pan and oven.

“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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