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Fried Chicken with Cream Gravy

A fried chicken served with a cream gravy made from rendered pork fat, milk, flour, butter, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fried Chicken with Cream Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the fat pork into pieces and cook in a frying pan until the fat is rendered.

  2. Wash and cut up the chicken, soak it in salt water for 30 minutes, then wipe dry.

  3. Season the chicken with pepper and dredge with flour.

Fry and make the gravy

  1. Fry the chicken in the hot fat until each piece is a rich brown on both sides.

  2. Drain the chicken on brown paper and keep it covered.

  3. In the frying pan, add 1 cup of milk or cream thickened with 1 tablespoon of flour and 1 tablespoon of butter.

  4. Add chopped parsley, let it boil, and pour the gravy over the 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pork + chickentop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Frying in the rendered fat browns the flour-coated pieces, giving the crisp golden crust.
Fat pork
Its rendered fat is the frying medium that cooks the chicken and carries flavor into the crust.
Flour
Coats the chicken so it browns and crisps, and thickens the milk or cream into gravy.
Milk or cream
Forms the base of the gravy, adding richness and a smooth, creamy texture when thickened.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the gravy, rounding out its richness.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken until deep brown on both sides. The chicken must fry in hot fat long enough to brown well, since the browned flour coating forms the crust. Too cool a pan leads to greasy, pale, poorly crisped pieces.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, chicken, pepper, flour, milk, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, chicken, pepper, flour, milk, butter. 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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