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To Fry Cold Chicken

A dish of chicken pieces fried in butter and served with a brown gravy thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

To Fry Cold Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut up the chicken and remove the skin.

  2. Rub the chicken pieces with egg.

  3. Cover with seasoned bread-crumbs and chopped parsley.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry in butter until golden brown.

  2. Serve with brown gravy thickened with flour and butter, seasoned with Cayenne, mushroom ketchup, and lemon pickle.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the seasoned bread-crumbs to the chicken pieces so the coating adheres while frying.
Seasoned bread-crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating on the outside of the chicken as it fries.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and promotes browning and rich flavour in the coating.
Flour
Thickens the gravy by gelatinizing with its liquid as it heats.

The step that matters

Fry in butter until golden brown. Butter browns at a lower temperature than oil and can scorch before the chicken is cooked through. Keeping the heat moderate lets the coating colour evenly while the meat cooks inside.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, bread, butter, flour, pepper, mushroom. 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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