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Virginia Fried Chicken

A Southern dish of fried chicken served with a milk or cream sauce and sautéed mushrooms and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Virginia Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Dredge the cut-up chicken in flour and sprinkle with salt.

  2. Heat a good quantity of boiling lard in a pan.

  3. Fry the chicken until it is a light brown.

  4. Fry the small pieces of mushroom until golden.

  5. Fry the picked parsley until crisp.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk or cream, butter, pepper, salt, and parsley.

  2. Stew the mixture briefly.

Serve

  1. Pour it over the fried chicken.

  2. Garnish the dish with additional 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through while its surface browns in the hot fat.
Flour
Coats the chicken, helping it brown and crisp during frying.
Lard
Heats the chicken evenly and gives the coating a crisp, golden-brown finish.
Milk or cream
Makes the rich, smooth sauce that is poured over the fried chicken.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, savoury flavour to the cream sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing the milk or cream mixture briefly. Cream can separate or scorch if it boils hard or sits over high heat. Gentle, brief heat keeps the sauce smooth and prevents the fat from splitting out.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, milk, butter, 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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