Chicken (Food)

The Roman Republic passed a law on 161 BC banning fattened chickens and limiting the consumption of others consumption to one per meal. The law was issued because of fears of moral decay caused by excessive luxury.

The first known recipe for deep-fried chicken dates all the way back to the 4th century. It's called "Pullum Frontonianum" and can be found in the Roman cookbook of Apicius.

Fried chicken has a long history in American cuisine, and it is believed to have originated in the American South. However, the exact origins of the dish are difficult to trace.

It is not clear when the term "fried chicken" was first used, but it is likely that the dish itself has been around for centuries. Scottish immigrants to the southern United States may have brought their tradition of frying chicken with them, and African slaves may have added their own seasonings and cooking techniques to the dish.

The popularity of fried chicken in America increased in the 19th century, and it was a common dish in both urban and rural areas. It was often served at social gatherings, such as picnics and church suppers, and was a staple of southern cuisine.

After the Civil War, fried chicken became even more popular as African American cooks began to develop their own versions of the dish, using a variety of seasonings and spices. The dish eventually spread beyond the South and became a beloved part of American cuisine.

In 1948, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, or A&P, sponsored the "Chicken of Tomorrow” contest to give the world a better chicken. Almost all chickens eaten today came from the winner of competition whose genetics now dominate poultry farms worldwide.

A new chicken dish, Coronation Chicken was invented by Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume of Le Cordon Bleu School in London in 1952. It was served at a luncheon for heads of state visiting after the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

In the early 1960s, chicken meat was considered a luxury. Less than 8 billion broilers were sold worldwide in 1963. By 2003, sales had increased to 49 billion.

Food scientist Robert Baker invented the chicken nugget in a laboratory at Cornell University in New York in the early 1960s . He successfully created a "chicken stick" that would retain form when freezing or frying. Instead of patenting the invention, he sent the recipe to hundreds of companies.

Chicken wings used to be considered junk meat parts, and were tossed out. Then, on October 3, 1964, Teressa Bellissimo at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York decided to cook and serve them. Today there is a shortage of chicken wings worldwide, which has caused prices to go up.

As these first Chicken wings were made at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, they are also known as Buffalo wings.

As president Bill Clinton had a weakness for spicy Indian dishes. The White House kitchen cooked some for him and his wife Hilary at least once a week. Frequently when they get the opportunity to eat out, the Clintons would go to a local Washington Indian restaurant for a chicken tandoori.

Competitive winner Molly-Schuyler won 2016 Philadelphia's Wing Bowl in front of a sold out crowd of 20,000. Schuyler, who weighs 125 pounds, ate 429 chicken wings in 30 minutes, consuming a total of 77,650 calories to take the crown Philadelphia’s annual eating contest.

In Gainesville, Georgia, the “Poultry Capital of the World”, it is illegal to eat fried chicken in any way other than with your fingers.

Americans will eat about 1.23 billion chicken wings on Super Bowl Sunday — that's enough to give everyone in the US three pieces.

If we cooked every living chicken in the world, the chicken would fill enough KFC 16-piece buckets to stack to the moon and back 3 times.

Chickens account for over 90% of the nearly 10 billion land animals killed for food each year in the U.S.

The fried-chicken-and-beer combo known as chi-maek is cheap and beloved in South Korea, Koreans eat about 600 million chickens per year and Korean fried chicken (or KFC) and beer is so popular that its fascination has spread to China via Korean soap operas. A Chinese company once flew all 4500 of its employees to Korea so they all can have chi-maek.

The unnatural diets and lack of exercise of today's battery-farmed chickens means they contain more than twice the fat and about a third less protein than 40 years ago.

In an average lifetime, a person will eat 2,222 chickens.

In the United States, ready-to-eat rotisserie chickens are highly popular. In 2018, over 900 million rotisserie chickens were sold by food service outlets and retail stores. Rotisserie chickens are often cheaper than whole raw chickens because shops use them to bring more people into the store and also they are often made with poultry that is about to reach its best by date.

Rotisserie chicken sold in supermarkets are "plumped" with water or brine before being sold: some breasts can be up to 40% water after plumping.

The FDA uses the term "wyngz" when describing boneless white meat chicken fritter products that are made of chicken, but not wing meat.

Chicken soup improves the performance of cilia, the hairlike structures in the nose that prevent contagions from infiltrating our bodies.

According to Chinese custom, eating chicken at a person's funeral helps the departed soul fly to heaven.