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Breaded Chicken

Breaded chicken pieces baked with butter and a gravy made from flour, butter, and cream or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Breaded Chicken

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Breaded Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Roll the chicken pieces in the beaten egg.

  2. Coat the chicken with bread crumbs mixed with parsley, pepper, and salt.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Place the chicken in a dripping pan.

  3. Dot the pan with butter.

  4. Add a little water.

  5. Bake slowly, basting often until cooked through.

  6. Remove the chicken.

Make the gravy

  1. Make gravy in the pan by adding flour and butter, stirring until smooth.

  2. Add cream or milk to achieve desired gravy consistency and season to taste.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking slowly to stay moist and tender.
Eggs
Bind the bread crumb coating so it adheres to the chicken.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp coating that browns during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the pan drippings brown into the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the pan drippings into a smooth gravy.

The step that matters

Bake slowly and baste often. Low oven heat cooks the chicken through gently, while basting keeps the surface moist so the coating does not dry out or scorch before the meat is done.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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