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 ↓
Fried Chicken
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Clean the chicken, remove pin feathers and oil bag, and cut into serving pieces.
Dip each piece into cold water, then into the flour mixed with salt and pepper, shaking off excess.
Fry and serve
Heat the lard and butter in a frying pan.
Cook the chicken pieces slowly, turning often until cooked through.
Keep hot until all pieces are done, and serve with white sauce or brown gravy.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,902 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,958 recipes
Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
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Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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
- Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through to become tender inside.
- Flour
- Forms a light coating that crisps and browns in the hot fat.
- Lard and butter
- Frying fat that conducts heat and adds richness and browning flavor to the crust.
The step that matters
Cook the chicken pieces slowly, turning often. Slow, frequent turning lets heat reach the thick bone-in pieces to the center before the flour coating over-browns and burns. Fat that is too hot scorches the crust while leaving the meat underdone.
“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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