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Fried Chicken

A whole chicken or pieces are seasoned, coated, and fried until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove pin feathers from the chicken and singe it.

  2. Split the chicken down the back, clean it, and wipe it with a damp cloth.

  3. Cut the chicken into halves, quarters, or joints.

Coat and fry

  1. Dust the pieces with salt and pepper, then dip them in flour.

  2. Dip the chicken in beaten egg and breadcrumbs before frying.

  3. Fry the chicken slowly in moderately hot fat (350°F / 175°C).

  4. Serve hot with Cream Sauce.

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. Flour + eggtop 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. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Chicken + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,991 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Flour and egg 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

Chicken
Provides the meat that is cooked through by slow frying in hot fat.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the crust brown and crisp in the hot fat.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumbs to the chicken so the coating adheres during frying.
Breadcrumbs
Adds a crisp, browned outer layer when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken slowly in moderately hot fat. Frying at a moderate temperature lets the meat cook through to the bone before the coating over-browns. Fat that is too hot burns the crust 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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