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Fried Breast of Chicken with Corn Fritters

Fried chicken breasts served with sauce supreme, corn fritters, and watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,907 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fried Breast of Chicken with Corn Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Singe, draw, wash, and simmer the spring chickens until barely done.

  2. Remove from heat, cool, and skin the chickens.

  3. Remove the breasts and season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and powdered thyme.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll the breasts in melted butter, then in flour, and finally in beaten eggs.

  2. Fry in hot fat until golden and drain.

Serve

  1. Serve with Sauce Supreme poured underneath, garnished with small corn fritters and watercress.

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. Nutmeg + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs form a coating that sets when fried, holding the flour and butter layers together.
Flour
Flour dries the surface and gives the coating a base that browns and crisps in hot fat.
Melted butter
Butter helps the flour adhere and adds richness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until golden and drain. The fat must be hot enough to crisp the coating quickly. If it is too cool, the breading absorbs grease and turns soggy, while the chicken is already cooked and can dry out if overfried.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour, egg, sauce):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour, egg, sauce. 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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