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Fried Chicken

Fried chicken pieces coated in flour, fried in lard, served with a gravy of flour, milk, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,389 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Wipe the chicken pieces dry.

  2. Dip the chicken in flour.

  3. Fry the chicken in lard, starting rapidly and then reducing heat to steam slowly.

  4. Remove the chicken from the pan.

Make the gravy

  1. Add 2 tablespoons of flour to the remaining grease and cook until browned.

  2. Stir in 1 cup of milk and ½ cup of cream to make the gravy.

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 + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Is the main protein that is cooked through by frying and steaming.
Flour
Forms a coating that browns in the hot fat and helps thicken the gravy.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and gives the chicken a rich, crisp browned surface.
Milk
Combines with the browned flour and fat to form the body of the gravy.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken in lard, starting rapidly and then reducing heat to steam slowly.. Starting hot browns and crisps the coating, while lower heat afterward lets the thick pieces cook through without burning the crust.

“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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