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Fried Chicken

Fried chicken prepared by coating pieces in flour, eggs, and breadcrumbs, then frying in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,236 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Kill the chicken and clean it two hours before cooking.

  2. Wash the chicken well.

  3. Chop the chicken into eight pieces.

  4. Salt the pieces.

  5. Place the salted pieces in a sieve to dry.

Coat the chicken

  1. Prepare sifted bread crumbs.

  2. Coat each piece of chicken in flour.

  3. Dip each piece in beaten eggs.

  4. Coat each piece with bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the chicken in hot lard, covered on one side.

  2. Fry the chicken in hot lard, uncovered on the other side.

  3. Serve immediately with green lettuce.

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 + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  4. Bread + lettucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 meat that cooks through in hot fat while the coating crisps.
Flour
Dry first coat that helps the egg and crumbs stick to the chicken.
Eggs
Liquid binder that holds the bread crumb coating to the chicken.
Bread crumbs
Outer coating that becomes crisp and golden when fried in fat.
Lard
Frying fat that transfers heat to the coating, browning it and adding richness.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken in hot lard, covered on one side.. If the lard is not hot enough, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping. Frying covered first lets the thick pieces cook through with steam, and uncovered frying then dries and crisps the surface.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

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