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Spring Chicken Fried

A fried chicken dish with a savory gravy made from giblet broth, butter, and flour, served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Spring Chicken Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper.

  2. In a pan, fry the salt pork over medium heat until light brown, then add the butter.

  3. Add the chicken to the pan and fry over low heat until light brown.

  4. Pour in the giblet broth, cover the pan, and cook until the chicken is tender.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the chicken and thicken the gravy with flour, additional giblet broth, and milk, cooking until thick.

  2. Serve the chicken on buttered toast, pour the gravy over it, and sprinkle with chopped hard boiled egg and garnish with watercress or parsley.

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. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

  2. Flour + watercresstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Spring chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender as it cooks covered in broth.
Fine cut salt pork
Renders fat into the pan, adding savory flavor and helping the chicken brown.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing to browning and a rich flavor.
Flour
Thickens the broth and milk into a smooth gravy as it cooks.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the gravy.
Giblet broth
Provides liquid for cooking the chicken and the base flavor for the gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour. Flour must be cooked with the liquid long enough to swell and set; stirring it into hot liquid and cooking until thick avoids a raw, lumpy, or pasty gravy.

“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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