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Fried Chicken

Fried chicken pieces coated in salted flour, pan‑fried, served with a cream gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chickens at the joints.

  2. Roll the pieces in salted and peppered flour.

Fry

  1. Fry slowly in hot butter and lard until browned on both sides.

  2. Remove the chicken to a hot platter.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Pour 1 pint of cream or milk into the frying pan.

  2. Thicken with 2 tablespoons of flour made smooth with some of the milk.

  3. Let it boil and pour over the chicken.

  4. Alternatively, serve the gravy in a separate dish.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Chickens
Provide the meat that is cooked through and browned in the fat.
Flour
Coats the chicken so it browns and forms a crisp crust, and thickens the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the frying and helps the chicken brown.
Lard
Adds fat that holds a high frying heat for browning the chicken.
Cream or milk
Forms the base of the gravy, adding richness and body when thickened.

The step that matters

Fry slowly in hot butter and lard. Frying slowly over moderate heat lets the chicken cook through before the coating darkens too far. Too fast and the outside burns while the inside stays underdone.

“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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