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Fried Chicken

Fried chicken pieces served in a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Cut the chicken into pieces and season with half the salt and pepper. Roll in 2 tablespoons of flour.

  2. Heat the Cottolene and ½ teaspoon of salt in a frying pan until smoking hot.

  3. Add the chicken, ensuring not to crowd the pan. Brown on one side, then turn and brown the other side.

  4. Remove the chicken and place it in a warm covered dish.

Make the cream gravy

  1. Pour out all but 3 tablespoons of fat from the frying pan. Stir in 1 tablespoon of flour until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the milk while stirring continuously. Season with the remaining salt and pepper, and add the parsley.

  3. Return the browned chicken to the pan and cook gently for 5 minutes.

  4. Serve on a hot dish garnished with parsley.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Chicken + parsleytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,314 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat that is browned and then simmered in the gravy.
Flour
Coats the chicken for a crisp crust and thickens the milk into a smooth gravy.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, adding richness and a creamy texture.
Cottolene
Fries the chicken, conducting heat to brown the coating and add rich flavour.

The step that matters

Brown the chicken without crowding the pan. Crowding drops the fat temperature and traps steam, so the coating steams instead of browning and turns soggy rather than crisp.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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