Name: Chicken Fried with Salt Pork
Ingredients: 1 tender chicken, cleaned and cut up; ½ cup flour; coarse sea salt, to taste; black pepper, to taste; ½ pound fat salt pork, sliced

Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Chicken Fried with Salt Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

Roll the chicken pieces in flour seasoned with salt and pepper.
In a frying pan, fry the salt pork slices until brown, then remove and keep warm.
In the same drippings, fry the chicken pieces until brown.

Make the gravy and serve

Cover the chicken with boiling water and season the gravy with salt and pepper.
Let the gravy boil for a moment, then serve the chicken and fried pork on a dish with the gravy in a bowl.

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.

Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,417 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,958 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,559 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Chicken and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,559 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

Flour: Coats the chicken so it browns and helps thicken the gravy.
Fat salt pork: Renders fat for frying the chicken and adds savory, salty flavor.
Tender chicken: Forms the main dish, browning in the rendered pork drippings.

The step that matters

Frying the chicken until brown in the drippings. Browning builds flavor through the Maillard reaction, but the pieces must be dry and fried at a steady heat, or they steam instead of browning and the flour coating can scorch before the chicken is cooked through.

“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.

Chicken Broth257 recipes

Chicken Soup156 recipes

Pork Cake107 recipes

Creamed Chicken89 recipes

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Chicken Fried with Salt Pork