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Fried Chicken

Fried chicken pieces coated in cracker crumbs, served with a gravy made from flour, milk, and chopped giblets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the skin from the chicken pieces.

  2. Dip the chicken in egg, then coat with cracker crumbs.

Cook and make gravy

  1. Cook the chicken in butter in a tightly covered pan.

  2. Add flour to the pan to make gravy, stirring carefully to blend.

  3. Thin the gravy with milk and add chopped giblets.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in butter until tender.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating when the chicken cooks in fat.
Butter
Conducts heat and browns the coating while adding rich flavor.
Flour
Thickens the pan drippings into a smooth gravy.
Milk
Thins the flour-thickened gravy and adds creaminess.

The step that matters

Cook the chicken in a tightly covered pan. Covering the pan traps steam so the chicken cooks through and becomes tender, while the coating still needs enough fat to brown. Keeping the heat controlled prevents the coating from scorching before the inside is done.

“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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