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Fried Chicken with Cream Gravy

A dish of fried chicken topped with a cream gravy made from butter, flour, cream or milk, baking soda, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 with Cream Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Strain the fat from the cooked chicken.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until slightly browned.

  3. Add the hot cream or milk mixed with baking soda and stir until it bubbles.

  4. Cook for two minutes to prevent scorching.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the minced parsley and pour the gravy over the chicken.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps form the base of the gravy with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks in the melted butter, giving it body.
Hot cream or milk
Supplies liquid and creaminess that forms the body of the gravy.
Baking soda
Raises the pan's alkalinity, which speeds browning in the flour and butter mixture.

The step that matters

Cook for two minutes after the liquid is added. Flour thickens only when its starch has been heated in liquid, and cooking briefly afterward removes the raw floury taste and keeps the gravy from scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, 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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