Name: Chicken Fritters
Ingredients: cold roast or boiled chicken; pepper; coarse sea salt; chopped parsley; 1 to 2 tablespoons best salad oil; juice of ½ lemon; frying batter (as described below); clarified dripping or lard for frying; fried parsley for garnish

Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Chicken Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the cold chicken into neat pieces, trim them, and remove the skin.
Place the chicken in a pie dish, season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and chopped parsley.
Moisten with 1 to 2 tablespoons of salad oil and the juice of ½ lemon, cover, and let it stand for 30 minutes.
Prepare the frying batter as described below.
Heat clarified dripping or lard in a deep pan until smoking hot.
Drain the chicken pieces on a cloth or paper, dip each into the frying batter to completely cover it.
Drop the battered chicken into the hot frying fat and fry until golden.
Remove, drain, and serve on lace paper, 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,092 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,958 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).