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Fried Chicken

Fried chicken pieces coated in flour, pan‑fried, served with a cream gravy.

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 ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Soak the chicken pieces in a mixture of salt and water, changing the water several times.

  2. Roll each piece in flour.

Fry and season

  1. Fry the chicken in very hot lard or butter until golden brown.

  2. Season the fried chicken with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Fry fresh parsley in the same pan.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour off excess lard from the pan.

  2. Add cream to the pan.

  3. Season the gravy with salt and pepper.

  4. Thicken the gravy with a little flour.

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 meat that is coated, fried and served.
Flour
Coats the chicken to form a browned crust and later thickens the gravy.
Lard or butter
Fries the coating, carrying heat for browning and adding richness.
Cream
Adds body and richness to the pan gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken in very hot fat until golden brown. If the fat is not hot enough, the flour coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of forming a crisp, browned crust. Hot fat sets the coating quickly, and the chicken cooks through as the crust browns.

Swap the parsley

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