Skip to main content
Main

Fried Chicken

Fried chicken pieces coated in salted flour, fried in butter and lard, served with a cream gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chickens at the joints.

  2. Roll the chicken pieces in salted and peppered flour.

Fry and make the gravy

  1. Fry the chicken slowly in hot butter and lard until browned on both sides.

  2. Remove the chicken and place it on a hot platter.

  3. Pour 1 pint of cream or milk into the frying pan.

  4. Thicken the cream or milk with 1 tablespoon of flour mixed with 2 tablespoons of milk.

  5. Let the mixture boil and pour it over the chicken.

  6. Alternatively, serve the gravy in a separate dish.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Chickens
Provide the meat that is jointed, coated, and fried until browned.
Flour
Forms a coating that browns in the fat and also thickens the cream gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the frying fat and helps the chicken brown.
Lard
Provides a high-temperature frying fat that browns the chicken evenly.
Cream or milk
Forms the base of the gravy, adding richness and a smooth texture when thickened.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken slowly in hot butter and lard. Slow frying over moderate heat cooks the meat through while the coating browns gradually; too high a heat scorches the outside before the interior is cooked.

“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.

More fried chicken recipes

with Tomato Sauce 6Italian 6Oven 6with Cream Gravy 5Virginia 5Marinated 4 See all 214 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes