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Fried Spring Chicken

Fried Spring Chicken is a whole chicken fried in lard and butter, served with a gravy made from browned flour and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fried Spring Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean and joint the chicken.

  2. Soak the chicken in salt water for 1 hour.

  3. Heat equal parts lard and butter in a frying pan until enough to cover the chicken.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll each piece of chicken in flour.

  2. Dip each piece of chicken in beaten egg.

  3. Drop the chicken into the hot fat.

  4. Fry the chicken until brown.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Pour most of the fat from the pan.

  2. Thicken the remaining fat with browned flour.

  3. Add hot milk to the thickened fat.

  4. Serve the chicken on a heated platter garnished with parsley.

  5. Serve the gravy in a gravy boat.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Is the main dish, cooked through by frying in hot fat until brown.
Lard
Provides the frying fat, adding flavour and helping the coating brown crisply.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the frying fat and the gravy base.
Flour
Forms a coating that browns in the fat and helps the crust hold.
Eggs
Bind the flour coating to the chicken so it adheres during frying.
Browned flour
Thickens the leftover fat into a gravy with a toasted, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Drop the chicken into the hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the coating absorbs grease and turns soggy instead of crisp. Adding pieces to hot fat seals the coating quickly, and crowding the pan drops the temperature, so cook in batches if needed.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, egg, milk. 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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