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Maryland Fried Chicken with Corn Dodgers

Maryland fried chicken served with fried cornmeal slices called corn dodgers.

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

Maryland Fried Chicken with Corn Dodgers

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the chicken

  1. Clean and wipe the chicken pieces.

  2. Drop the chicken pieces into boiling lard and fry until well browned and thoroughly cooked.

  3. Remove cooked pieces to a hot platter.

  4. Pour off the lard, leaving the chicken gravy in the pan.

Make the gravy

  1. Return the pan to the heat and add 1 cup of cream.

  2. Dredge in a little flour, stir, and bring to a boil; let boil for three minutes.

  3. Season with pepper and salt, then pour over the chicken.

  4. Sprinkle with finely chopped parsley.

Fry the corn dodgers and serve

  1. Cut the firm, cold cornmeal mush into slices.

  2. Dip the slices lightly in egg, cover with flour, and fry in butter.

  3. Garnish the edge of the platter with corn dodgers and serve.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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
Frying in hot lard browns the outside while cooking the meat through.
Cream
Thickens with flour into a rich gravy that coats the fried chicken.
Flour
Thickens the cream into gravy and gives the corn dodgers a light browned coating.
Cornmeal mush
Firm, cold mush holds its shape when sliced and then fried.
Egg
Binds the flour coating to the corn dodger slices so they brown evenly.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the corn dodgers as they brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Boiling the cream gravy. Flour needs to boil for a few minutes to cook out its raw taste and to thicken the cream fully. Stopping early leaves a thin, pasty gravy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, flour, pepper, egg, 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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