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With Cream Gravy

Chicken pieces fried in lard and butter, served with a cream gravy made from sweet cream, flour, salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

With Cream Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken into six pieces: breast, back, wings, and legs.

  2. Mix ½ cup sifted flour, ½ teaspoon salt, and ½ teaspoon pepper in a bowl. Coat each chicken piece in the flour mixture.

Fry and arrange

  1. Heat equal parts lard and butter in a pan until the mixture is ⅓ inch deep. Fry the coated chicken pieces until browned, turning as needed.

  2. Arrange the cooked chicken on a platter: breasts side by side, backs beneath, legs and wings surrounding.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix 1 pint sweet cream, 1½ tablespoons flour, ½ teaspoon salt, pepper to taste, and parsley to taste until smooth. Add the cream mixture to the pan with the lard and let it simmer.

  2. Pour the hot gravy over the chicken 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Flour and butter 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
Provides the main protein; browning the coated pieces gives the dish its savory crust.
Flour
Coats the chicken to form a crisp browned crust and thickens the cream gravy.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and body, becoming a smooth, creamy gravy when simmered.
Lard and butter
Conduct heat for frying and add fat flavor that browns the chicken coating.

The step that matters

Let the gravy simmer after adding the cream. Flour needs to be heated in the liquid to cook out its raw taste and thicken the cream; adding it to the pan and simmering gently keeps the gravy smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

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