Why it works: Chicken and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,958 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓
Fried Chicken
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Dress, disjoint, and salt the chicken a day before cooking.
Wash the chicken thoroughly to remove the salt and let it drain for a few minutes.
Fry
Heat the lard in a skillet.
Roll each piece of chicken in flour and drop it into the hot lard, cooking only as much as will cover the bottom of the skillet.
Season with pepper, cover, and cook slowly until one side is light brown.
Turn the chicken and brown the other side.
Serve
Serve with cranberry sauce or quince jelly.
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.
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Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,958 recipes
Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
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Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,559 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Chicken and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,559 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
- Young chicken
- Provides the meat that is cooked through and browned in the fat.
- Lard
- Frying fat that conducts heat evenly and gives the coating a crisp, browned surface.
- Flour
- Forms a coating that browns in the hot fat and helps the crust stay crisp.
The step that matters
Cooking only as much chicken as covers the skillet bottom. Crowding the pan drops the fat temperature, so the chicken steams and absorbs grease instead of browning and crisping. Spacing the pieces keeps the fat hot.
“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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