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Fried Chicken

Fried chicken coated in cracker crumbs, served with a cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cook the chicken until tender.

  2. Dip the chicken in the egg, then coat it with sifted cracker crumbs.

  3. Fry the coated chicken in hot lard until golden brown.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a separate pot, whisk 1 teaspoon of flour into ½ cup of the chicken-boiling water.

  2. Boil the mixture for 5 minutes, then season with salt and pepper.

  3. Stir in ½ cup of cream.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the chicken on a platter and serve immediately.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg
Binds the cracker crumbs to the chicken so the coating stays on during frying.
Flour
Thickens the chicken-boiling water into a sauce as it boils.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the coated chicken in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisp. Frying until golden brown means the crumbs have browned, which gives the crust its flavour and colour.

“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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