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Fried Chicken

A whole chicken fried in butter, seasoned with pepper and salt, then simmered until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Chicken and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,902 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chicken and fry until golden brown.

  3. Sprinkle with pepper and salt.

  4. Cover the stewpan and cook on moderate heat for about 30 minutes, until thoroughly cooked.

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

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

  2. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the dish, cooking through to become tender and firm.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and helps the chicken brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Cover and cook through on moderate heat. Chicken must be cooked all the way through to be safe to eat. Covering the pan on moderate heat lets the heat reach the centre of the meat without burning the browned outside, so the cook should check that the chicken is thoroughly cooked before serving.

“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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