Skip to main content
Main

Fried Chicken

A dish of chicken pieces fried in butter and lard, served with a cream gravy.

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

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 and fry

  1. Cut the chickens at the joints.

  2. Roll the pieces in salted and peppered flour.

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

  4. Remove the chicken to a hot platter.

Make the gravy and serve

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

  2. Thicken with two tablespoons of flour made smooth with two tablespoons of 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 coated, fried and served as the main dish.
Flour
Coats the chicken and, mixed with milk, thickens the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor for frying and browning the chicken.
Lard
Adds fat that tolerates hot frying and helps brown 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. Slow frying in fat cooks the chicken through while the flour coating browns gradually. Frying too fast can scorch the coating before the meat is cooked inside.

“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.

More fried chicken recipes

with Tomato Sauce 6Italian 6Oven 6with Cream Gravy 5Virginia 5Marinated 4 See all 214 →

You might also like

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