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Chicken, Fried

A whole chicken fried in lard, dusted with flour and salt, served with cornmeal cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,675 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the breast bone from the chicken.

  2. Dust the chicken with flour and rub with salt.

Make the mush

  1. In a separate pot, mix cornmeal with water to make a stiff mush and let it cool completely.

Fry

  1. Heat the lard in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Fry the chicken until it is light brown.

  3. Cut the cooled mush into cakes and fry until light brown.

  4. Fry a little parsley in the pan with the chicken.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Chicken and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,559 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
Provides the main protein, which cooks through in the hot fat while the flour coating browns.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and adds fat that helps the coating brown and crisp.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that browns in the fat and gives the chicken a crisp surface.
Cornmeal
Sets into a firm mush when cooled, so it can be cut and fried into cakes.

The step that matters

Let the mush cool completely before frying. Cornmeal mush is soft while hot and sets as it cools by absorbing water and firming up. If it is cut and fried warm, the cakes can break apart and absorb excess fat.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour. 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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