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Fried Chicken

Fried chicken is chicken pieces coated in a flour and egg batter and deep‑fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,649 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Remove the skin from the chicken pieces and season with coarse sea salt.

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, tepid water, and olive oil to create a batter.

  3. Just before using, fold in the beaten egg white.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the chicken pieces into the batter.

  2. Heat fat in a pan until hot, then drop in the battered chicken.

  3. Fry until golden brown, then remove and drain on white paper.

  4. Garnish with parsley before serving.

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. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it adds airy lightness to the batter so the coating puffs and stays crisp.
Flour
Forms the body of the batter, which clings to the chicken and sets into a crisp coating when fried.
Olive oil
Adds fat to the batter, promoting a tender interior and helping the coating brown evenly.
Choice pieces of chicken
The main protein; its moisture cooks through while the batter crisps around it.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg white just before using. Stiffly beaten egg white traps air that expands in the hot fat. If it sits too long, it deflates and the coating turns dense rather than light and crisp.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, olive, egg. 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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