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Fried Chicken

Pieces of chicken are soaked in saltwater, coated in egg and flour, fried in lard, served with a cream gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the chicken pieces in a saltwater solution, changing the water several times.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll each piece in beaten eggs and then in thin flour.

  2. Fry the chicken in hot lard until golden brown.

Make the gravy

  1. For the gravy, combine cream with salt, pepper, and chopped parsley.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Chicken + parsleytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,314 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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.
Eggs
Bind the flour coating to the chicken so it adheres during frying.
Thin flour
Forms a crisp, browned crust when fried in hot fat.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the coating to a golden color.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the coating absorbs fat and becomes greasy instead of crisp. Too much heat can brown the outside before the meat inside is cooked through.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, flour, cream, pepper. 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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