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Chickens

Bread crumb coated chicken quarters served with a ketchup and cayenne pepper gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the chicken into quarters.

  2. Rub the chicken with the egg yolk.

  3. Strew bread crumbs, pepper, salt, nutmeg, lemon peel, and parsley over the chicken.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat butter in a pan and cook the chicken until done.

  2. Place the chicken in a dish before the fire.

  3. Thicken gravy with flour.

  4. Add cayenne pepper, ketchup, and lemon juice to the gravy.

  5. Pour the gravy over the chicken and serve.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken quarters
Provides the main protein, which cooks through in the pan and forms the body of the dish.
Egg yolk
Acts as a binding glue so the bread crumbs stick to the chicken.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when the chicken is cooked in butter.
Butter
Fat for frying that carries heat and promotes browning of the coating.
Flour
Thickens the gravy by absorbing liquid and forming a smooth, body-giving base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Cook the chicken until done. The chicken must be cooked through, since undercooked poultry is unsafe. Cooking in butter over moderate heat helps the coating brown without burning before the interior reaches doneness.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, bread, pepper, lemon, parsley, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, bread, pepper, lemon, parsley, butter. 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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