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Fried Chicken

Fried chicken pieces are coated in flour, fried, then simmered in a milk and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,389 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Prepare the chicken for frying.

  2. Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper.

  3. Roll each piece thoroughly in flour.

Fry

  1. Heat fat in a frying pan until boiling hot, about 1½ inches deep.

  2. Add the chicken and cover with a lid.

  3. Fry until brown on one side.

  4. Add boiling water and turn the chicken.

  5. Fry until tender.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Pour off all the fat, leaving the sediment in the pan.

  2. Add milk and stir thoroughly.

  3. If the sauce is not thick enough, mix 1 teaspoon of flour with a little milk before adding it to the pan.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Pour over the chicken.

  6. Serve.

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 + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

Flour
Coats the chicken, forming a crust that browns and crisps during frying.
Milk
Combines with the pan sediment to form a sauce, adding moisture and richness.
Fat
Conducts heat for frying, browning the coating and cooking the chicken through.

The step that matters

Heating the fat before frying. The fat must be boiling hot before the chicken goes in. Hot fat seals the flour coating quickly, so it browns crisply instead of absorbing grease and turning soggy.

“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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