Talk:Fried chicken

Page name change request

• What I think should be changed the title of the page should be changed from fried chicken to southern fried chicken
• Why it should be changed: the origin page is USA and fried chicken originally came from Scotland. Another editor will not allow added origins as they insist the page is just to do with southern fried chicken.
• References supporting the possible change (format using the "cite" button):

Sharnadd (talk) 14:50, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

References

 Not done to request a page rename see the process at Wikipedia:Requested moves. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:58, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Battering vs breading

The first paragraph of this article confuses battering with breading. It rightly describes fried chicken as usually being battered in a coating of egg milk and flour. But then later it refers to that coating as a breading. Breading is a different three step process. First, the chicken is coated in flour. Then it’s dipped in an eggwash. All of this is seasoned. Then the egg washed chicken is dipped (dredged?) into a breading of things like Panko or cornmeal or anything else that would crackle out when in a deep fat fryer but still cling to the chicken in the oil. If battering is described then any breading reference should be changed to battering. Documikey (talk) 01:00, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Removing Jewish foodways from the article

I don't agree with the removal of Jewish foodways from the article. I'm not aware of any dispute and can't imagine why it would be disputed to add two sentences about Jewish cultural foodways needed because "Sunday dinners" are mentioned. I think it was a mistaken removal of disputed and undisputed content together and have restored it for now. Yaksmarrow (talk) 06:35, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Article contradicts itself and the Karaage article?

The Karaage article says they were cooking fried chicken in Japan since at least the 16th century. The Tempura article says that Japanese fritters were introduced by Portuguese missionaries toward the end of the 16th century. This article says fried chicken "evolved from the 16th century British Frie chicken" (whatever that is). But then immediately after, it says fried chicken derived from Scottish and West African precedents. Then it goes into a lengthy defense of the claim that African slaves introduced fried chicken to the United States.

It seems like there was, unsurprisingly, some dispute about who gets credit for fried chicken, white Americans or black Americans. That apparently led to a citation war (explaining why the History section is littered with excessive inline citations), which was resolved by fusing the two parallel perspectives together. But this leads to an incoherent section that can't decide who invented frying or who brought it (and seasoning) to the US.

Given the popularity of fritters in medieval Europe as Lenten food, and the sources indicating that Karaage and Tempura developed in Japan as early as the mid 16th century, it's hard to believe West Africans introduced Europeans to the notion of deep frying chicken. Some sources make a vague assertion, without any evidence, that fried chicken "has its origins" in West African cuisine. There's also one claiming that deep frying in the South followed "the African method," but not offering any evidence or sources for that method. But the sources that actually provide some detail on the history don't say anything about fried chicken specifically, just that chicken was an ancestral, sacred food. The examples of West African chicken dishes don't seem to bear any resemblance to American fried chicken, while Japanese karaage bears an extremely close resemblance to it. But the article itself seems to conflate chicken with fried chicken.

Maybe it would be better to simply say that two different parties claim credit, and there isn't any conclusive evidence for the "paper trail" of American fried chicken. Then the article can focus on known historical examples of fried chicken, like karaage and the Scottish preparations (and I guess also the British "Frie chicken," if anyone knows what that is... is that a typo or a proper noun?), and anything else that can be found (I've heard colloquially there is an old tradition from China but don't know of any sources with details).

Which leads me to the other problem with the article, its America-centrism. If the content were left as-is, it should really be entitled "Southern fried chicken," because the entire History section seems to start in the 16th century and only mentions influences on the American dish. But as I already noted earlier, a very similar dish (differing only in the subtleties of preparation and local seasoning preferences) was being prepared in Japan even earlier, and presumably also in Portugal. This European and Japanese development would be interesting to cover, not just for the sake of a global perspective but also because it predates any American tradition and presumably influences the American tradition (with the US colonies and nearby Mexico having been founded by European colonists).

Since sources on deep frying are known to predate sources on fried chicken, it would also be worth mentioning earlier varieties of fritters. It's not hard to see how people who habitually deep fried dough and vegetables might have got the idea to try it with pieces of chicken. But I'm not sure what the article's intent is. Are we intentionally only concerned with the American dish? Is the History section about the development of fried chicken in general, or is it about the introduction of fried chicken to the United States? GlacialHorizon (talk) 23:27, 8 January 2025 (UTC)