Name: Fried Chicken with Cream Sauce
Ingredients: 2 chickens, cut into pieces; Salt and pepper, to taste; Flour, for dredging; 2 eggs; Hot lard, for frying; 1½ cups cream or rich milk; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 tablespoon flour; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fried Chicken with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

Sprinkle chicken pieces with salt and pepper.
Dredge chicken in flour.
Beat the eggs and dip each piece of chicken in the egg.

Fry and make the sauce

Fry the chicken in hot lard until golden brown.
In a saucepan, boil the cream or milk.
Rub the butter into the flour and add to the boiling cream, stirring constantly.

Finish and serve

Once it boils again, pour the sauce around the fried chicken and serve.

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.

Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,958 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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 that is seasoned, coated and fried until crisp.
Flour: Forms a dry coating on the chicken and thickens the cream sauce.
Eggs: Bind the flour coating to the chicken so it adheres during frying.
Lard: Conducts heat to fry the coated chicken, producing browning and a crisp crust.
Cream or milk: Forms the body of the sauce, adding richness and creaminess.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the sauce, smoothing its flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the butter-flour mixture to the boiling cream. Flour must be fully blended in while stirring constantly, otherwise it clumps and the sauce turns lumpy instead of smooth and evenly thickened.

“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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Fried Chicken with Cream Sauce