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Fried Chicken and Rice

Fried chicken served with boiled rice and a gravy made from the parboiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Fried Chicken and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut up the chicken and parboil it with enough salt to season.

Fry and serve

  1. Once the chicken is tender, fry it in butter until golden.

  2. Serve the fried chicken on a platter with boiled rice.

  3. Make a gravy by thickening the water used to parboil the chicken, season it, and pour over the chicken and rice.

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. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

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; parboiling first makes it tender before frying.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and promotes browning, giving the chicken a golden surface.
Boiled rice
Serves as the starchy base that soaks up the gravy and balances the rich chicken.
Parboiling water
Carries seasoning and chicken flavour, and thickens into the gravy.

The step that matters

Frying the parboiled chicken. Parboiled chicken has a wet surface. Pat it dry before frying, because surface moisture cools the fat and steams the skin instead of letting it brown and crisp.

“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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