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Fried Chicken

Whole chicken pieces fried in butter and lard, served with a thickened milk and cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Dry each piece of chicken with a cloth.

  2. Mix flour, pepper, and salt in a bowl. Roll the chicken pieces in the flour mixture.

Fry the chicken

  1. In a skillet, heat butter and lard over medium heat.

  2. Fry the chicken slowly for 30 to 45 minutes, until browned.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a separate pan, cook flour in the fat.

  2. Add milk and cream, stirring until thickened.

  3. Season the sauce to taste.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Chicken
Provides the main meat, which turns tender and juicy as it cooks through.
All-purpose flour
Forms a coating that browns in the fat and crisps the outside of the chicken.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the frying fat and helps the crust brown.
Lard
Fries the chicken at a steady heat, giving a crisp, golden crust.
Milk
Liquid that thickens with the cooked flour to form the sauce body.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety texture.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken slowly. Frying at a steady medium heat lets the thick pieces cook through before the coating darkens too much. Too hot and the outside burns while the inside stays underdone.

“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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