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Chicken a LA Maryland

A chicken dish with fried pieces served in a sauce made from giblet broth, cream, and potato flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken a LA Maryland

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut off the legs and wings of the chicken and divide the breast into four pieces.

Make the giblet stock

  1. Combine the gizzard, liver, heart, neck, water, salt, onion, celery, and parsley in a small saucepan.

  2. Cook until giblets are soft, about 2 hours.

  3. Strain the giblet cooking liquid.

Fry the chicken

  1. Heat chicken fat in a large frying pan or deep kettle.

  2. Salt the chicken pieces, coat with flour, and fry slowly until dark brown.

  3. Remove the chicken and place it on a deep platter.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Add the strained liquid to the frying pan.

  2. Stir vigorously to mix in the brown crusts from the pan.

  3. Bring to a boil for 3 minutes.

  4. Add the cream.

  5. Thicken with potato flour paste.

  6. Stir in some fresh parsley.

  7. Pour over the chicken.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  4. Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 browned and served in the dish.
Flour
Coats the chicken so it browns and forms a crust while frying.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the finished sauce.
Potato flour
Thickens the sauce into a smooth, glossy gravy.
Giblets (in the method)
Simmered to make a flavorful stock for the gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken slowly until dark brown. Slow frying lets the flour coating and meat brown evenly without burning. The browned crust and pan residue create the flavor base that the gravy builds on.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, celery, flour, cream, potato):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, celery, flour, cream, potato. 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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