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Fried Chicken

Fried chicken pieces coated in breadcrumbs and cheese, served with a sauce made from reduced stock, egg yolks, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,936 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken joints in white stock until half-cooked.

  2. Remove the chicken and drain it.

  3. Reduce the stock by boiling.

  4. Remove the stock from heat.

  5. Stir the egg yolks and lemon juice into the stock.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each chicken piece into the sauce.

  2. Coat each chicken piece with breadcrumbs and cheese.

  3. Fry in deep oil until well browned.

Serve

  1. Serve the remaining sauce hot with the fried 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 + cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,936 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Egg + cheesetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + cheesetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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 meat, which is partly cooked by poaching before frying.
Egg yolks
Enrich the stock into a thick, creamy sauce that helps the coating cling.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.
Cheese
Adds savory flavor and helps the coating brown.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the stock. If the stock is too hot when the yolks go in, they can scramble instead of thickening smoothly. Removing the pan from heat first lets the yolks thicken the sauce gently.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, cheese):

  1. Grapefits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Pumpkinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, cheese. 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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