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Plain Fried Chicken

A simple fried chicken prepared by seasoning, coating in flour, and pan‑frying until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the cleaned and disjointed chicken with salt and pepper for a few hours.

  2. Wipe the chicken dry.

  3. Dip each piece in the beaten eggs, then roll in flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard or fat in a frying pan until half full and boiling.

  2. Fry the chicken pieces on one side until golden, then turn and fry the other side.

  3. Serve on a platter.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Chicken + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,991 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through by frying in fat.
Eggs
Bind the flour coating to the chicken so it adheres during frying.
Flour
Forms a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.
Lard or fat
Conducts heat to cook the chicken and gives the coating its browning and flavour.

The step that matters

Drying the chicken before coating. Surface moisture stops the flour from sticking evenly and turns the coating soggy or patchy. Wiping the pieces dry lets the egg and flour form an even layer that crisps well in hot fat.

“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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