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Cold Chicken Fried

Fried chicken marinated in salt, pepper, butter, lemon, parsley, and onion, then coated in flour and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cold Chicken Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Place the cold chicken in a deep dish and cover with salt, pepper, melted butter, lemon juice, parsley, and onion.

  2. Let the chicken soak for 3 to 4 hours, turning occasionally.

Fry and serve

  1. Remove the chicken, sprinkle flour over it, and fry until golden.

  2. Serve piled high on a dish and pour gravy sauce seasoned with sweet herbs around it.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken
The main protein, which cooks through while its floured surface fries to a golden crust.
Melted butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps keep the meat moist.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and slightly tenderizes the meat during soaking.
Flour
Forms a crisp, golden crust when the chicken is fried.
Onion
Adds savory aroma that infuses the meat during the long soak.

The step that matters

Flouring and frying the soaked chicken. The chicken should be dredged in flour just before frying so the coating sticks and crisps. Meat that is still wet from soaking may cause the flour to clump or stay pale, while overly hot fat can brown the crust before the meat is cooked through.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, butter, lemon, parsley, 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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