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Menu for a Dinner of Six

Battered fried chicken pieces served with a broth of chicken trimmings, onion, peppercorns, ketchup, and lime peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Menu for a Dinner of Six

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of 2 eggs with 1 tablespoon brandy, 1 tablespoon salad oil, and 4-5 tablespoons water.

  2. Mix in 3 tablespoons flour and a pinch of salt, adjusting consistency with more water or flour as needed.

  3. Whip the saved egg whites to a froth and fold them into the batter just before using.

Fry the chicken

  1. Dip the chicken pieces into the batter and fry in boiling fat until golden brown.

  2. Drain on blotting paper and serve with fried parsley and lime slices.

Make the broth and stew

  1. Combine chicken trimmings, chopped onion, peppercorns, meat gravy, lime peel, ketchup, and salt in a pot.

  2. Strain the broth and use it to cover the selected chicken pieces in a stew pan.

  3. Add 1 carrot and a handful of French beans, and stew gently until the chicken is cooked.

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. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Onion + limetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + limetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whipped whites lighten it for a airy, crisp coating.
Flour
Forms the batter structure that clings to the chicken and crisps when fried.
Brandy
Adds aroma and its alcohol evaporates quickly in hot fat, leaving a lighter crust.
Salad oil
Adds fat to the batter, helping it stay tender and brown evenly.
Chicken
Main protein; the batter coats it while the trimmings flavour the broth.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whites must be whipped to a froth and folded in just before frying, because they lose air over time and the batter then fries flatter and heavier.

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, brandy, flour, chicken, onion, meat, ketchup):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, brandy, flour, chicken, onion, meat, ketchup. 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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