Here at CHICKANO, we take huge amounts of pride in crafting our uniquely delicious golden fried, crispy, fresh and never frozen fried chicken! It’s not only our job, but our passion! In this blog post, our fried chicken experts will detail some of the reasons - backed up by science that fried chicken is so delicious.
The Crunch
Scientific evidence has pointed to the crispy crunch of the layer over fried chicken as being one of the primary reasons for it’s taste-bud pleasing deliciousness. In a 2016 paper published in the food science journal ‘Flavour’ by the experimental psychologist Charles Spence, the sound of crispy fried chicken is isolated to be a hidden reason it’s so delicious. The author declares sound to be a ‘forgotten flavour sense’, saying that the fizz of soda helps boost our multi sensory experience of the drink, boosting it’s flavour. How we sound the food we eat actually helps our brain accentuate it’s textural qualities, as well as its flavour. Crispness and crunchiness is actually shown to be correlated with how delicious food is considered by it’s eaters!
The Experience of Eating Fried Chicken
Because of the way human anatomy is organised, one hears the food their eating much louder than anybody else around you. The sound of a crunch is an indicator to our brains that food is much fresher than food without a crunch; this is likely because of ancient neurochemistry evolved from when we were hunter-gatherers - a mushy vegetable is inherently less pleasant, and healthy seeming to us than one with crunch! Besides the indicators of freshness, the crunch of fried chicken helps make it’s consumption a multi sensory culinary experience, rather than a mundane meal!
Fried Chicken Flavour Chemistry
First of all, fat has a bad rap. Our bodies actually require a certain amount of fat in our diets for health and satiety. The combination of the natural fat in chicken, as well as the salt in it’s seasoning helps our bodies understand that we’re eating a meal that’s both satisfying, filling, and delicious. The way that fried chicken skin carries multiple factors of complex taste and texture creates a sense of ‘dynamic contrast’ in our experience of consumption. This is slightly challenging and stimulating to the brain - hence the reason fried chicken is eminently more delicious, satisfying, and fun to eat than something bland or plain. Umami, a recently isolated flavour of savoury pleasure, is proven to be one of the most satisfying aspects of food flavour - which is likely due to a chemical process known as polymerisation, where food’s acids join in a chain, creating a complex and delicious flavour that makes our taste buds smile!