Skip to main content
Main

Spring Chicken

Fried chicken pieces served in a cream sauce thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,958 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Spring Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken into pieces and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Roll the chicken pieces in flour.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the chicken in hot lard, covering closely until cooked through.

  2. Remove the chicken from the pan and pour out nearly all the fat.

  3. Add 1 cup of cream to the pan and thicken with a little flour.

  4. Season the cream sauce with salt and pepper, then pour it over 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. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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 pieces
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked through by frying under cover.
Flour
Coats the chicken and later thickens the cream into a sauce.
Lard
Fries the chicken and gives it a rich, browned surface.
Cream
Forms the base of the sauce, adding richness and a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Thickening the cream sauce with flour. Flour must be stirred in evenly with the cream, or it clumps. Starch in flour swells when heated in liquid, so adding it to a simmering pan gives a smooth, thickened sauce.

“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