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Kentucky Fried Chicken

A fried chicken dish with a lard-based gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Kentucky Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Flour each piece of chicken and dust lightly with salt and pepper.

Fry the chicken

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan until smoking hot, then add the chicken.

  2. Cover and cook slowly for 30 minutes, turning occasionally.

  3. Remove chicken and pour off excess fat from the pan.

Make the gravy

  1. Add butter to the pan and let it brown.

  2. Stir in flour, then pour in milk, adding salt and pepper.

  3. Let the gravy thicken and serve it separately.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Coats the chicken and thickens the gravy as it cooks with the butter and milk.
Butter
Browns in the pan residue, adding nutty flavour to the gravy.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, which thickens as it heats.
Lard
Fat for frying that browns the chicken and carries heat evenly around it.

The step that matters

Heat the lard until smoking hot before adding the chicken. Starting the chicken in very hot fat sears the flour coating so it browns and crisps rather than absorbing grease and turning soggy.

“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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