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Fried Chicken

A chicken dish fried after marinating in vinegar, stock, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

  1. Soak the chicken quarters and giblets in warm water for 2-3 hours.

  2. In a bowl, mix vinegar, stock, salt, pepper, parsley, green onions, and bay leaf.

Cook and serve

  1. Drain the chicken and giblets, then dip them in the beaten egg white.

  2. Coat with flour and fry in hot oil until golden brown.

  3. Serve garnished with fried parsley.

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

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

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein that cooks through during frying.
Egg white
Helps the flour coating stick to the chicken as it fries.
Flour
Forms a crisp, golden coating when fried in hot oil.
Vinegar
Acidity in the soaking mixture that can help tenderize the chicken.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil until golden brown. If the oil is not hot enough, the coating absorbs excess oil and turns greasy instead of crisp. Oil that is too hot browns the coating before the chicken cooks through, so the cook must keep the temperature steady.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, vinegar, pepper, parsley, egg, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, vinegar, pepper, parsley, egg, flour. 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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