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Mock Fried Chicken

A baked chicken dish prepared by frying pieces in fat, then baking with water and milk gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,389 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Mock Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Singe, draw, and wash the chicken thoroughly, rubbing a little soda over the outside, then wash again.

  2. Cut the chicken into pieces suitable for frying.

  3. Heat a few tablespoons of snowdrift in an iron kettle or griddle.

Brown and bake

  1. Wipe the chicken pieces dry with a clean cloth, sprinkle with salt, and flour them well.

  2. Brown each piece in the hot kettle, then arrange them in the bottom of a roasting pan.

  3. Add 1 cup of boiling water, cover closely, and cook in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for two hours.

Make the gravy

  1. Arrange the chicken on a platter and keep hot while making gravy.

  2. To make the gravy, add milk to the water left in the pan and thicken with flour moistened with cold milk.

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Roasting chicken
Provides the meat that is browned, then cooked gently until tender in the covered pan.
Flour
Coats the chicken so it browns in the fat, and thickens the gravy.
Snowdrift
Cooking fat that browns the floured chicken pieces and adds richness.
Milk
Mixes with the pan liquid to make a creamy, thickened gravy.

The step that matters

Brown each piece in the hot kettle. The fat must be hot enough to brown the floured surface quickly. Crowding the pieces or using cool fat steams them instead, leaving pale skin and less flavor.

“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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