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Pulled Chicken

Pulled chicken is dish made by pulling a whole chicken into large pieces, dredging in flour, frying in butter, simmering in gravy, and adding lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pulled Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin from the chicken.

  2. Pull the flesh off the bones in large pieces.

Fry the chicken

  1. Dredge the chicken pieces in flour.

  2. Fry the chicken in butter until nicely browned.

  3. Drain the chicken from the butter.

Simmer and serve

  1. Simmer the chicken in well-seasoned gravy thickened with a little butter rolled in flour.

  2. Add a squeeze of lemon before serving.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and shreddable after simmering in gravy.
Flour
Coats the chicken for browning and thickens the gravy with the butter.
Butter
Fries the chicken to a golden brown and enriches the gravy with fat and flavour.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken until nicely browned. Browning through frying creates savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale chicken tastes flat, and draining well keeps excess butter from making the gravy greasy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, 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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