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A nearly 300-year-old fried chicken recipe — and it's nothing like what comes out of a bucket today. This one comes from an English household book printed in 1736, and the women who cooked from it knew a secret we've forgotten: you flavor the bird before it ever touches the fat, not after.
In this video, Esther walks you through the whole old method, step by step — a bright, three-hour sour marinade built on lemon and vinegar, a light wine batter instead of seasoned flour, and a crumbled fried-parsley finish that almost nobody makes anymore. Cheap ingredients, real history, and a flavor your family won't expect from the first bite.
It's not harder than what most folks do now. It's not more expensive. It's just older — and the older it got, the fewer people had reason to keep it alive. This is how you pull it back.
If you try it, come down to the comments and tell me how it turned out — which vinegar you used, and whether your family was surprised. And tell me your county and how old your house is. I like knowing what kind of kitchen this is being cooked in.
🔔 Subscribe for more old hous
https://eliasyoder.com
A nearly 300-year-old fried chicken recipe — and it's nothing like what comes out of a bucket today. This one comes from an English household book printed in 1736, and the women who cooked from it knew a secret we've forgotten: you flavor the bird before it ever touches the fat, not after.
In this video, Esther walks you through the whole old method, step by step — a bright, three-hour sour marinade built on lemon and vinegar, a light wine batter instead of seasoned flour, and a crumbled fried-parsley finish that almost nobody makes anymore. Cheap ingredients, real history, and a flavor your family won't expect from the first bite.
It's not harder than what most folks do now. It's not more expensive. It's just older — and the older it got, the fewer people had reason to keep it alive. This is how you pull it back.
If you try it, come down to the comments and tell me how it turned out — which vinegar you used, and whether your family was surprised. And tell me your county and how old your house is. I like knowing what kind of kitchen this is being cooked in.
🔔 Subscribe for more old hous
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00There is a recipe for fried chicken that is almost 300 years old, and it does not taste
00:06like anything you buy in a bucket today.
00:09Most people believe fried chicken is purely American, born in the South, fried in cast
00:15iron, dredged in seasoned flour, and that's the whole of the story.
00:20But the truth is older and stranger than that.
00:23The method I'm going to hand you comes out of an English household book, printed in the
00:28year 1736, before this country was even a country, and the women who cooked from books
00:35like that knew something we have plainly forgotten.
00:38They knew you flavor the bird before it ever touches the hot fat, not after.
00:43They knew the secret to good fried chicken is not in the crust at all.
00:48It's in what you do to the meat in the hours before you ever light the fire.
00:52What you taste in most fried chicken today is the coating.
00:55A seasoned crust, salt and pepper, and whatever spice blend came in the packet, sitting on
01:01top of a piece of chicken that, underneath, tastes of nothing in particular.
01:05The old way turns that inside out.
01:08The flavor goes into the bird, deep into the meat, and the crust is only there to seal it
01:14and crisp it.
01:15Once you understand that difference, you can never go back to the other way, and you'll
01:19wonder how we ever let the better method slip out of our hands.
01:23I remember the first chicken I ever watched fried properly.
01:27I was small, standing on a stool at my grandmother's elbow, and she had a piece of bird sitting in
01:33a bowl since the early afternoon.
01:35I asked her why she didn't just cook it, why it had to wait, and she told me a thing
01:40I've
01:40never forgotten.
01:42She said, the waiting is the cooking.
01:44The fire only finishes what the patient starts.
01:47I didn't understand her then.
01:49I understand her now, and that is the whole of what I want to teach you today.
01:54My name is Esther Yoder, and I keep house and raise our children here in Lancaster County,
01:59the same way my mother and her mother did before me.
02:02A quick word before we go further.
02:05The old methods I and my husband use, the kind I am sharing today and many more like
02:10it, there's too much of it for any single video.
02:13I've put the whole of it together in a book at EliasYoder.com.
02:18The book is the long version.
02:20Now, here's how you do it, and I'll walk you through every part of it slow enough that
02:24you could set this video down and do it from memory.
02:27You start with the marinade, because the marinade is where this whole dish lives or dies.
02:33Everything good about this chicken happens in the first three hours, in a bowl, before
02:38any heat touches it.
02:39And the marinade begins with something sour and bright.
02:43The old book calls for two sour things together, lemon juice and verjuice.
02:48Now verjuice is a word most of us would have to look up, and I had to myself the first
02:53time
02:53I read it.
02:54Verjuice is the pressed juice of unripe grapes, gathered before the fruit has gone sweet, sour,
03:00and green tasting, but soft in the mouth, never sharp the way you'd brace yourself for.
03:06In the old kitchens, before lemons came cheap and steady to every market, verjuice is what
03:11a cook reached for when she needed sourness.
03:14They pressed it from the small, hard grapes that would never ripen anyway, the ones the
03:19sun didn't reach on the shaded side of the vine, and they kept it through the season in
03:23a cool cellar.
03:25Nothing wasted.
03:26That was the way of those kitchens.
03:28The sour grape that wouldn't sweeten still had a job to do, and a good cook found that
03:33job for it.
03:34I think on that often because it tells you everything about how those women saw the world.
03:39To them, there was no such thing as a useless thing.
03:42The grape too sour to eat became the sourness that flavored the meat.
03:47The bone too tough to chew became the broth that fed the family for three days.
03:52The fat trimmed off the roast became the fat the next thing was fried in.
03:56A kitchen ran in a circle, and every scrap found its way back around to feed somebody.
04:01We've lost that circle.
04:03We throw the sour grape away now, and buy a bottle of something to replace what it would
04:08have given us for free.
04:11Most of us don't keep verjuice in the pantry now, so plain vinegar will stand in its place
04:17and do the work.
04:18But I want you to understand what you're standing in for, because it tells you what you're after.
04:31If you can get malt vinegar, that's the closest to what an English kitchen would actually have
04:37used back in those days.
04:39They called it wine vinegar in the old books, but the thing they meant was malt vinegar as
04:45we'd know it today.
04:47If malt is too strong for your liking, cider vinegar will serve.
04:52And so will plain distilled white vinegar, if that's all that's on your shelf.
04:57I use the juice of two good-sized lemons, and then pour in the same amount of vinegar to
05:03match it, equal parts.
05:06That's your sour foundation.
05:08Now lemons are worth a word of their own here.
05:12In the time this recipe was written, a lemon was not a small thing.
05:17Whether you had lemons at all depended on where you lived and what your
05:21station was.
05:23They came up from the warm countries on ships, and a poor household inland might go a whole
05:29year without seeing one.
05:31And here's a thing the old cookbooks tell us that surprises people.
05:36Lemon peel, the zest of it, was the second most common spice you'd find listed across
05:4218th century kitchens.
05:43Not because they had so many lemons, but because when one came into the house, every part of
05:50it was used.
05:52The juice went into a dish like this one.
05:55The peel was grated and dried and kept, and it flavored cakes and puddings and sauces for
06:01weeks after.
06:03Nothing of that precious fruit was thrown out.
06:06That's the spirit of an old kitchen.
06:08You take the whole of a thing and you waste none of it, because you don't know when the
06:14next one is coming.
06:16Into your sour liquid you put your seasonings, salt, black pepper, a few cloves, and two bay
06:23leaves.
06:24Now the old book is shy about amounts, the way old books almost always are.
06:29They wrote for women who already knew their own kitchens, who measured by the hand and the
06:35eye and didn't need telling.
06:37It only gives us a real number for the bay leaves, two, and leaves the rest to your judgment.
06:43So I'll tell you plainly what works, so you're not left guessing the way I was.
06:48About a teaspoon of salt.
06:50A teaspoon of black pepper.
06:52And a quarter teaspoon of ground cloves.
06:55And go easy with the cloves, because clove is a bold, warm spice, and a little of it carries
07:01a long way.
07:02Too much, and it takes over the whole dish.
07:06A quarter teaspoon is right.
07:08Then you add a half cup of green onions, chopped up.
07:12The old book calls them by a strange old word that we had to look up, but what it means
07:17is
07:17green onions, what some folks call spring onions, plain and simple.
07:22If you happen to have shallots in the house, you can use those in their place, and I'd almost
07:28encourage it because shallots were very common in those old kitchens, and they'd bring a
07:33finer, sweeter onion flavor to the marinade.
07:36Either one does the job.
07:38The onion isn't there to be tasted on its own so much as to deepen everything around it,
07:44to give the sourness something round to lean against.
07:48Stir all of that together.
07:50The lemon, the vinegar, the salt and pepper and clove, the bay, the onion, and you have
07:56your marinade.
07:56Give it a taste with a clean spoon.
07:59It should make you pucker just slightly, bright and sharp, with the warmth of the clove sitting
08:05underneath.
08:06If it's too fierce, a touch more lemon balances it.
08:10Trust your own mouth here.
08:12Your mouth knows more than any printed measurement.
08:15Now to the chicken.
08:17Cut your bird into pieces.
08:19The old recipe says to quarter it into four big pieces, but I cut mine smaller, into the
08:25pieces you'd actually want to serve and eat.
08:28Thighs, drumsticks, wings, the breast halved again.
08:31I do this for a plain reason.
08:34It goes farther that way.
08:35When you've got a long table and a row of hungry children down both sides of it, a chicken cut
08:42into eight or ten pieces feeds more hands than a chicken cut into four.
08:46That's not a fancy reason.
08:49It's a kitchen reason.
08:50And the old women cooked by kitchen reasons.
08:53And while you've got that bird under your knife, let me say a word about using the whole of
08:58it.
08:59Because it's part of the same lesson as the sour grape.
09:02The back and the bony bits that don't fry up into a nice serving piece, don't you throw
09:08those out.
09:09They go into a pot with an onion and a little salt and some water and they simmer down low
09:15all afternoon into a broth that's worth more than the chicken itself.
09:20The neck, the wing tips, the carcass once you've cut the good meat off, all of it has
09:26a second life in the stock pot.
09:27My grandmother got three meals out of one hen and she'd have been ashamed to get fewer.
09:34The fried chicken was the feast.
09:36The broth was the week.
09:38That one bird stretched clear across a family because nobody let any part of it go to waste.
09:45Lay your chicken pieces down in the marinade, turn them so every side is wetted, and let
09:51them sit for three hours.
09:52Now hear me on this, three hours, not overnight, not as long as you can, three hours, and this
10:01matters more than you'd think.
10:02If you used one of the stronger vinegars, like the malt, and you walk away and leave that chicken
10:08sitting in it all night, the acid keeps working the whole time.
10:12It pulls too far into the meat, turns the flavor sharp and biting, and worse, it starts
10:19to break the meat down and turn the texture soft and mealy.
10:23Sour is your friend for three hours, and your enemy by morning, so set a timer if you need
10:29to.
10:30Three hours and no more, and you'll be glad you held the line.
10:34Cover the bowl and set it somewhere cool while it works.
10:37I put mine in the coolest corner of the pantry, but a cold box will do you fine, and in
10:44the
10:44warm months, you'll want it cold to be safe.
10:47Raw chicken left to sit warm is asking for trouble, so keep it cool the whole three hours.
10:53While the bird is sitting in its sour bath, you've got time to make the batter, and here
10:58is where this old recipe parts ways entirely with the fried chicken you grew up on.
11:04There's no buttermilk soak here, there's no bowl of seasoned flour to dredge and pat and
11:10shake.
11:11Instead, you make a thin batter, almost like a pancake batter, and you dip the bird straight
11:17into it.
11:18That batter, fried, sets into a light, crisp shell.
11:22It's a different creature from the thick, craggy crust of southern fried chicken, lighter, finer,
11:28more like a fritter coat.
11:30It shatters a little when you bite it, instead of crunching heavy.
11:34I use about a cup and a half of plain flour to start, just ordinary, all-purpose flour,
11:40nothing special.
11:41Then you pour in white wine, a light one, a rind-style wine is what the old book leans
11:46toward.
11:47And you add it slowly, stirring as you go, until the flour loosens into a thin batter.
11:53You're looking for something that will coat the back of a spoon but still run off it freely.
11:58Not thick, not gluey, thin.
12:01When it's there, beat in the yolks of three eggs, which give the batter richness and help
12:06it brown, and a teaspoon of salt.
12:09Mix it until it's smooth and even, no dry lumps hiding in it.
12:13If it's gone too thick, loosen it with a little more wine.
12:16If it's too thin, a spoonful more flour.
12:19You'll feel when it's right.
12:21It should ribbon off the spoon in a thin, steady line.
12:24Now I know not everyone keeps wine in the house, and not everyone wants to cook with it,
12:29and that's no trouble at all.
12:31Cider will do the same job and bring a nice apple note of its own.
12:35And in a real pinch, even plain water will get you a working batter, though I'll be straight
12:40with you.
12:40You lose a little of the flavor and richness the wine or cider would have given.
12:45But the chicken will still fry up fine.
12:47Don't let the lack of wine stop you from making this.
12:51The method is bigger than any one ingredient in it.
12:54While your batter rests and your chicken finishes its three hours, let's talk about the fat.
12:59Because the frying is the part where you must keep your wits about you.
13:03The old book never says what to fry the chicken in.
13:07And that's because in 1736, the answer was so obvious nobody needed to write it down.
13:12You fried in lard, rendered from the pig, or in clarified butter for a finer dish.
13:19Those were the fats a kitchen had.
13:21You can use whichever frying oil you keep in your own house today.
13:25There's no need to render lard unless you want to.
13:28Whatever fat you use, you want enough of it to truly submerge the pieces.
13:33Because this is deep frying, not pan frying.
13:36A deep, heavy pot serves better than a shallow pan.
13:40Both for the cooking and for the safety of it.
13:43Because deep fat is less likely to slop over the side.
13:47Bring your fat up to about 350 degrees.
13:50If you've got a thermometer, use it.
13:52If you don't, here's how the old women judged it, and how you can too.
13:57The surface of the fat should shimmer and shift, like heat coming off a road in summer.
14:02But it should give off no smoke at all.
14:05Another old way to test it, drop a small cube of bread in.
14:09If it browns in about a minute, gently bubbling all around its edges, your fat is right.
14:15If it browns near instantly, the fat's too hot and wants pulling back.
14:20If the bread just sits there pale and soaks up grease, it's not hot enough yet, and your
14:25chicken will come out greasy.
14:27The moment fat begins to smoke, it's too hot.
14:30It's starting to break down, and your coating will scorch on the outside, before the chicken
14:35cooks through on the inside.
14:37If you see smoke, pull the pot off the heat and let it settle back down before you go on.
14:42Now, I'm going to stop and say a word about safety, and I won't skip past it because
14:48I'd never forgive myself if I sent you to do a thing and someone got hurt.
14:52Frying in deep, hot fat is the most dangerous thing most of us ever do in a kitchen.
14:58That pot of fat at 350 degrees will burn you to the bone in an instant, and worse, it can
15:05catch fire.
15:06So you do this with care and full attention, never distracted, never rushed.
15:11Keep the children well clear of the stove the whole time.
15:15This is no time for little ones underfoot.
15:18Keep a lid or a baking sheet within arm's reach, because if the fat ever flares up, you
15:24smother that fire with the lid.
15:26You cut off its air.
15:28You never, ever throw water on a grease fire.
15:31Water on burning fat turns it into a column of flame that will go up to the ceiling and
15:36take your kitchen with it.
15:37If you have a small kitchen fire that won't smother, you leave the house and call for help.
15:43Dry your hands before you go near the pot, because a single drop of water hitting hot fat
15:48will spit and pop and can scald you.
15:51And lower every piece of chicken into the fat gently, away from you, never dropping it
15:57in from a height that splashes the fat back at you.
16:00The old women respected hot fat the way you'd respect a wild animal in the kitchen.
16:05And you should, too.
16:07None of this is meant to frighten you off.
16:09It's meant to keep you safe so you can make this a hundred times.
16:13Now, dip each piece of marinated chicken into your batter, turn it so it's fully coated,
16:18and let the extra batter run off back into the bowl before you lower it into the fat.
16:24Slip it in away from you, gently.
16:26Fry in small batches, three or four pieces at a time.
16:30Maybe five if your pot is large, but no more than that.
16:34Here's why you don't crowd the pot.
16:36Every cold piece of chicken you put in drops the temperature of the fat.
16:40Put too many in at once, and the fat cools too far.
16:44And instead of frying crisp, your chicken sits and stews in lukewarm grease and comes out
16:50greasy and pale and sad.
16:52A few pieces at a time keeps the fat hot and the crust crisp.
16:57Patience here pays you back on the plate.
16:59Between batches, give the fat a moment to come back up to its heat before you put the
17:04next pieces in.
17:05Fry eat batch until the coating comes up a deep, rich color.
17:08The old book asks for a light mahogany brown, and that's just the right word for it.
17:14Not pale, not burnt dark, but that warm reddish brown of good furniture.
17:19Now color alone isn't the whole story.
17:22And this is important, chicken must be cooked all the way through to the bone.
17:26The batter can brown before the inside is done, especially on the thicker pieces like
17:31the breast and thigh.
17:33So for the bigger pieces, give them the time they truly need.
17:36And when you think they're done, cut into the very thickest one down to the bone and look.
17:41The juices should run clear, not pink.
17:44And the meat should be white through, no red or rosy color clinging to the bone.
17:49Once you've fried a few batches, you'll know the timing by feel.
17:53But until then, cut and check.
17:55Better to be sure than to serve a piece raw at the bone.
17:59There's no shame in cutting one open to check.
18:02Every cook does it, and the old women did too.
18:05As each batch comes out, lift it onto a rack or a folded cloth to let the fat drain off,
18:11and keep them somewhere warm while you fry the rest.
18:13A rack is better than a flat plate, because on a plate the underside sits in its own drained grease
18:19and goes soft.
18:21If you've a warm oven, set them in there with the door cracked to hold the heat while the last
18:25batches cook.
18:27And then there's one last thing, and I know when I tell you it'll sound strange,
18:31but I want you to trust the old book on this, because it's a small thing that makes the whole
18:36plate.
18:36Fried parsley.
18:38You take a good handful of fresh parsley, and before it goes anywhere near the fat,
18:43you must make absolutely certain it is bone dry.
18:46Bone dry.
18:47You blot it in a clean cloth, you pat it, you press it, until there is not one single drop
18:53of water left on it.
18:54I cannot say this strongly enough, and it's a safety matter as much as a cooking one.
18:59Wet greens dropped into hot fat will spit and spatter and throw scalding grease at you.
19:05Wet anything in hot fat is dangerous.
19:07So dry that parsley like your hands depend on it, because they do.
19:12Once it's truly dry, you fry the parsley in small batches, just a few seconds each,
19:17until it goes crisp and dark green and almost translucent.
19:21It happens fast, faster than you'd think, so don't walk away from it.
19:26Lift it straight out and let it drain.
19:28Then you crumble that crisp fried parsley over the top of your chicken,
19:32like a green seasoning scattered across the plate.
19:35It adds a flavor and a crispness, and a little touch of green that lifts the whole dish from good
19:40to something people remember.
19:42It's the kind of small, old flourish that we've lost.
19:45And it costs you nothing but a handful of parsley and a minute of care.
19:49And there it is, fried chicken the way an English kitchen made it in 1736.
19:54The flavors are different from what you're used to, and that's the joy of it.
19:59There's a brightness from the lemon and the sour marinade that comes through the meat itself,
20:04not just sitting on the surface.
20:05The crust is light and crisp instead of thick and heavy.
20:09And that crumbled parsley on top brings something fresh and green that you'd never expect on fried chicken.
20:15The first bite is a small surprise, and then you understand why somebody bothered to write it down 300 years
20:21ago,
20:22and why it's a shame we ever let it go.
20:24Now here's the part I want you to sit with for a minute, because it's the part that matters most
20:29to me.
20:30Why did a method this good get forgotten?
20:32Stop and really think on it.
20:34A bird flavored three hours deep in bright sour marinade, sealed in a light crisp batter,
20:39fried golden, and finished with crumbled green.
20:43That is not harder than what most folks do now.
20:46It's not more expensive.
20:47It doesn't take rare ingredients or special skill.
20:50It's just older.
20:51And here is the hard truth I've come to.
20:54The older it got, the less anybody had a reason to keep it alive.
20:58Knowledge like this doesn't get taken from you all at once.
21:01It slips away one generation at a time, quiet, when a mother is too busy or too tired to teach
21:08it,
21:08and a daughter is reaching for something faster.
21:11And after two or three generations of that, it's simply gone.
21:16And nobody even remembers that there was something to forget.
21:20So think about who profits from you not knowing this, because somebody does.
21:25There's a whole industry built up around fried chicken now.
21:29And every part of it makes its money on one idea.
21:33That good fried chicken is complicated.
21:36Or that it has to come from somebody else's kitchen, not yours.
21:40There's the packet of seasoning blend, sold to you so you don't have to know
21:45that salt and pepper and a sour marinade would do the work better.
21:49There's the bag of frozen breaded pieces in the freezer case,
21:52sold to you so you never learn how cheap and easy the fresh version is.
21:58There's the drive-through window with its bucket, built entirely on the belief
22:03that this is too much trouble to do at home.
22:06Every one of those makes money from your not knowing.
22:10Not one of them makes a cent from you learning to flavor and fry a chicken yourself
22:15for the price of the bird, a cup of flour, and a few pennies of spice.
22:20Now, I want to be careful and plain here because I'm not telling you a story
22:26about wicked men in a room somewhere plotting to steal grandmother's recipe.
22:31It was never like that.
22:32It's worse than a conspiracy in a way because nobody had to plan it.
22:37No one sat down and decided we should all forget.
22:41It happened on its own, the way water runs downhill.
22:44The packet was simply easier to sell than the knowledge.
22:49The frozen bag was simpler to stock than to teach a method.
22:53The drive-through was quicker than three hours and a hot pot.
22:57And so, year by year, the easy thing crowded out the good thing,
23:02and the knowing slipped through our fingers,
23:04and not one person ever had to mean for it to happen.
23:08That's the system.
23:10Nobody's steering it, and it carries us all the same direction anyhow,
23:15away from what we used to be able to do with our own two hands.
23:19But here's the good news in all of it, and the reason I make these videos at all.
23:25Forgotten is not the same as gone.
23:28The book still exists.
23:29The method still works exactly as it did in 1736.
23:34And the moment you make it yourself in your own kitchen,
23:38you've pulled it back out of the dark and made it yours again.
23:42Nobody can take it from you a second time once it's in your hands.
23:46And the next time you teach it to your own child standing at your elbow,
23:51you've put another link back in a chain that almost broke.
23:55That's how these things come home.
23:57One kitchen, one child, one bird at a time.
24:01So here's what I'd ask of you.
24:03If you go and make this, the 1736 bird,
24:08three full hours in the sour marinade, the light wine batter,
24:12the crumbled fried parsley scattered over the top,
24:15I want you to come down to the comments and tell me how it came out for you.
24:20Tell me which vinegar you used, because I'm curious which way folks go.
24:24Tell me if your family was surprised by it, because mine surely was the first time.
24:30And while you're down there, do something for me that I always ask.
24:35Tell me your county, and tell me how old your house is.
24:38I like to know what kind of kitchen this is being cooked in, what walls are around the stove.
24:44There's something about an old house, a house that has known a hundred years of cooking,
24:50that's had fat fried in it by women long gone, that takes to a recipe like this.
24:56The old kitchens remember.
24:58And when you cook this, your kitchen joins them.
25:01Next time, I'm going to show you an old way to keep eggs fresh for months without a refrigerator,
25:07the way the women did it before any of us had a cold box humming in the corner,
25:12when a hen's whole spring of laying had to be carried clear through to the lean part of winter.
25:18There was a method to it, a simple thing with a common kitchen ingredient,
25:23and it kept eggs good and whole for half a year and more.
25:27It's simpler than you'd believe, and it works, and almost nobody alive still does it.
25:33I'll show you how.
25:34The people who built this country with their hands, new things we are only just starting to remember.
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