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Fried Chicken

Fried chicken marinated in vinegar, sweet oil, pepper, salt, onions, parsley, thyme, coated in flour batter, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the bones from the chicken quarters without spoiling their shape.

  2. Place the chicken in a bowl with vinegar, sweet oil, pepper, salt, onions, parsley, and thyme.

  3. Let it marinate for a few hours, turning occasionally.

  4. Remove the chicken and dry it on a towel.

Batter and fry

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, eggs, and enough water to make a batter.

  2. Dip the chicken pieces in the batter and fry until golden brown.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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 and meat that the marinade and batter coat.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade that helps tenderize the chicken.
Flour
Forms the batter structure that clings to the chicken and crisps when fried.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set and brown during frying.

The step that matters

Drying the chicken before battering. Surface moisture keeps the batter from sticking and can cause it to slide off or steam instead of crisping in the hot fat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, vinegar, pepper, parsley, thyme, flour, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, vinegar, pepper, parsley, thyme, flour, egg. 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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