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Fried Chicken

Fried chicken prepared by cutting, seasoning, dredging, and frying in lard until cooked.

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

  1. Clean and cut the chicken as you would for a fricassee.

  2. Dredge each piece thickly with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a deep dish or frying pan until very hot but not smoking.

  2. Add the chicken and fry slowly until cooked through, about 45 minutes if the chicken is young.

  3. Arrange the fried chicken on a hot dish and garnish 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. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  3. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken
Main protein that cooks through in the hot fat, with its size and age setting cooking time.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, browned coating as it fries.
Lard
Cooking fat that conducts heat evenly and helps the coating brown.

The step that matters

Heat the lard until very hot but not smoking. If the fat is too cool, the coating absorbs grease and turns soggy. If it smokes, the coating burns before the chicken cooks through. Frying slowly at a steady heat lets the interior finish cooking as the crust browns.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits about as well
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, bread. 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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