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Fried Chicken with Puffs

A dish of fried chicken pieces served with biscuit dough puffs and a gravy made from lard, butter, flour, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Chicken with Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Separate the chicken into 9 or 10 pieces.

  2. Season each piece with salt and pepper, then coat with flour.

Fry

  1. Heat enough lard in a skillet to cover the chicken, then drop the pieces in.

  2. Cover the skillet and cook slowly, turning occasionally until golden brown.

  3. Remove the chicken and keep warm until serving.

Make the puffs and gravy

  1. For the puffs, make a rich biscuit dough, roll it thin, and cut into diamond shapes.

  2. Fry the diamond-shaped pieces quickly in lard as a garnish.

  3. To make the gravy, pour off the lard and strain it.

  4. In the skillet, melt the butter, add flour, and stir until smooth and light brown.

  5. Add boiling water and let it boil once.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Flour
Forms a light coating that browns and crisps the chicken skin during frying.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the gravy base.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and gives the chicken and puffs a rich, crisp finish.

The step that matters

Cooking the chicken slowly under cover. Covered, slow cooking lets the chicken cook through to the bone while the coating browns gradually. Turning it occasionally helps the crust brown evenly without burning before the meat is done.

“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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