Skip to main content
Main

Fribd Spring Chicken

Fried Spring Chicken is a whole chicken fried in lard and butter, served with a gravy thickened with browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fribd Spring Chicken

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean, joint, and soak the chicken in saltwater for 2 hours.

  2. Dip each piece of chicken in beaten egg, then roll each piece in cracker crumbs.

Fry

  1. In a frying pan, heat equal parts lard and butter to cover the chicken.

  2. Drop each piece into the boiling fat and fry until brown on both sides.

  3. Serve on a hot platter garnished with parsley.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour most of the fat from the pan.

  2. Thicken the remainder with browned flour, then add 1 cup of boiling water.

  3. Serve the gravy in a gravy boat.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Spring chicken
Provides the meat that is cooked through and browned in hot fat.
Egg
Binds the cracker crumbs to the chicken so the coating adheres during frying.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating that protects the chicken while it fries.
Lard and butter
Fat for frying that conducts heat and gives browning and rich flavor.
Browned flour
Thickens the pan drippings into a gravy and adds toasted flavor.

The step that matters

Drop each piece into the boiling fat. The fat must be hot enough to brown the coating quickly; if it is too cool, the crumbs absorb grease and turn soggy instead of crisp.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, egg, 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes