Skip to main content
Main

Pried Chickens

Pieces of chicken fried slowly in butter and lard, finished with a flour-thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pried Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the chickens and cut them into pieces.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Dust flour over each piece of chicken.

Fry

  1. In a pan, heat a mixture of hot butter and lard.

  2. Fry the chicken slowly until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Remove the chicken from the pan.

Make the gravy

  1. Add a little water to the pan.

  2. Mix in butter rolled in flour to thicken the gravy.

  3. Adjust seasoning with more pepper and salt if needed.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour 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 and, with butter, thickens the pan gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and browns the chicken surface.
Lard
Fat for frying that gives the chicken a crisp, golden crust.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken slowly until golden brown on both sides. Frying slowly lets heat reach the centre before the coating browns too far, so the meat cooks through without burning. Too much heat scorches the flour crust 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.

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