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Fbied Chicken

Fried chicken pieces coated in flour, fried, then served with a cream gravy thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Fbied Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the chicken pieces in a mixture of salt and water, changing the water several times.

  2. Roll each piece of chicken in flour.

Fry and make the gravy

  1. Fry the chicken in very hot lard or butter until golden brown.

  2. Season the chicken with coarse sea salt and black pepper while frying.

  3. Fry some fresh parsley in the same pan.

  4. In the same pan, pour off the excess lard and add cream, seasoning with salt, pepper, and mace.

  5. Thicken the gravy with flour, stirring until smooth.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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 meat that browns and cooks through in hot fat.
Flour
Coats the chicken so it browns into a crisp, golden crust.
Lard or butter
Fries the chicken, conducting heat to brown the coating and add rich flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it is stirred in, giving a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken in very hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy and pale before the chicken cooks through. Very hot fat sets the coating quickly, producing a crisp, golden crust.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

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