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Fried Chicken

Fried chicken with butter, flour, milk, and bread crumbs, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Wash the chicken well and dry each piece thoroughly.

  2. In a frying pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

Cook the chicken

  1. Add the chicken, season with salt and pepper, cover, and cook for 45 minutes, turning as needed.

  2. When nearly done, dip each piece in bread crumbs and return to the pan.

  3. Cook until the chicken is fully done and nicely browned.

  4. Remove the chicken to a warmed platter.

Make the gravy

  1. To make gravy, mix the flour with the remaining butter in the pan, stirring until cooked.

  2. Gradually pour in the milk or water and bring to a boil.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

Butter and flour 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 meat that cooks through in covered heat and browns at the end.
Butter
Conducts heat in the pan and adds richness and browning to the chicken.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a gravy when cooked in the butter.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating on the chicken near the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Dip in bread crumbs only when nearly done. Crumbs added too early can burn or soak up fat before the chicken cooks through. Adding them near the end lets the coating crisp and brown while the meat finishes cooking.

“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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