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Fried Chicken

Fried chicken coated in cracker crumbs, served with a cream sauce made from flour, water, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Prepare the chicken and cook until tender.

  2. Dip the chicken in beaten egg, then roll in cracker crumbs.

  3. Fry the chicken in hot lard until golden brown.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, add 1 teaspoon of flour to 1 cup of boiling water and boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then stir in ½ cup of cream.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the chicken on a platter and serve immediately.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg
Binds the cracker crumbs to the chicken so the coating adheres during frying.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating when fried.
Flour
Thickens the boiling water into a sauce base.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy and soggy instead of crisp. Frying until golden brown also means the chicken is cooked through with a properly browned 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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