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Fried Chicken

A fried chicken dish marinated in lemon juice and olive oil, coated in breadcrumbs, served with a mushroom and lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Soak the chicken pieces in a mixture of lemon juice, olive oil, and seasoning for 3 hours.

  2. Drain the chicken, dip each piece in beaten egg, then coat with breadcrumbs.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the chicken pieces in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. For the sauce, cook milk and white stock together with sliced mushrooms.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolk and add lemon juice and chopped parsley 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Olive + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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, which cooks through during frying while the outside turns crisp.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in hot oil.
Eggs
Bind the breadcrumb coating to the chicken so it adheres during frying.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce and gives it a smooth, rich texture as it is stirred in.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the chicken and the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the chicken until golden brown. Oil that is not hot enough lets the breadcrumb coating absorb grease and turn soggy, while the inside may stay underdone. Hot oil sets and browns the coating quickly so the chicken cooks through with a crisp crust.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, lemon, olive, egg, milk, mushroom):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Rosemaryfits about as well
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, lemon, olive, egg, milk, mushroom. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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