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
Simmer
Place the chicken pieces in a large skillet.
Add butter, lard, salt, pepper, and enough hot water to cover the chicken.
Cook slowly until the chicken is tender and the water has evaporated.
Brown
Brown the chicken gently, adding more lard and butter if necessary.
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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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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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it cooks slowly in water.
- Butter
- Adds fat and flavor, and helps the chicken brown once the water has cooked off.
- Lard
- Provides fat for browning the surface and carrying flavor through the frying.
The step that matters
Browning the chicken gently. Once the water has evaporated, the fat and the exposed skin brown quickly. Moderate heat lets the surface color evenly and become crisp without burning before the inside is fully cooked.
“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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