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Fried Chicken

Fried chicken pieces coated in flour, fried in lard or butter, served with a cream gravy thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Soak the chicken pieces in a saltwater solution, changing the water several times.

  2. Coat each piece of chicken in flour.

Fry

  1. Heat lard or butter in a pan until very hot.

  2. Fry the chicken pieces until golden brown, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  3. Fry the parsley in the same pan until crispy.

Make the gravy

  1. In the same pan, pour off excess lard and add cream, seasoning with salt, pepper, and a little mace.

  2. Thicken the gravy with a little flour, stirring until smooth.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Chicken
Provides the main protein; soaking in saltwater seasons it and helps keep the meat moist.
Flour
Coats the chicken to form a crisp, golden crust when fried, and thickens the gravy.
Lard or butter
Fat for frying that conducts heat and browns the coating while adding flavour.
Cream
Forms the base of the gravy, adding richness and a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken until golden brown. The fat must be very hot before the chicken goes in. Hot fat seals the flour coating quickly, producing a crisp crust and limiting oil absorption. Fat that is too cool makes the coating greasy and soggy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, butter, pepper, parsley, cream):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, butter, pepper, parsley, cream. 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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