Why it works: Chicken and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,559 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓
Plain Fried Chicken
Ingredients
Directions
Clean and cut up the young chickens, then soak them in a mixture of coarse sea salt and water.
Dredge the chickens in flour.
Heat lard in a pan until boiling, then add the chickens.
Cover the pan and fry until the chickens are brown.
Remove the chickens when done.
In the remaining gravy, add flour and stir in enough water to achieve desired consistency.
Boil the gravy and pour it over the fried chicken.
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.
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Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,559 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Chicken and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,559 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
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