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Maryland Chicken

Maryland Chicken is a roasted chicken dish served with cream sauce, bacon slices, and corn fritters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Maryland Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Split the chickens in half and detach the legs and wings.

  2. Season the pieces with salt and pepper.

  3. Dip the chicken pieces in the beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

Roast

  1. Place the coated pieces in a buttered pan and pour the clarified butter over them.

  2. Roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour the cream sauce onto a serving dish and arrange the chicken on top.

  2. Alternate the chicken with slices of thin boiled bacon and small corn fritters.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Chicken + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 cooks through in the dry oven heat.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the chicken so the coating adheres during roasting.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the oven.
Clarified butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and a rich flavour on the coating.
Cream sauce
Adds moisture and richness to the dish, served beneath the chicken.

The step that matters

Coating the chicken pieces. The egg must coat each piece evenly so the bread crumbs stick. Gaps leave bare skin that dries out or fails to brown in the oven. Patting off excess crumbs helps the coating stay on during roasting.

“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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