Many years ago, I was the co-host of Down the Hatch, a fun and totally bizarre podcast about alcohol and food. We’d discuss anything that could physically be consumed — and we stretched that definition to the extreme.

Amanda Gibson was our cocktail and culinary expert, while Jules Hart was our foodie about town — she knew the best places to eat, drink and have fun. I was the odd one out because I could barely cook rice and alcohol is merely a means to an end.

My job on the podcast was to sabotage our conversations in my Scottish accent and bring experimental food to the studio along with any unusual culinary or booze news from the world. If you want a pimento cheese and pepperoni quiche, I got you.

During our second season of the show, I brought in some news that surprised me, shocked Amanda and sent Jules into a justifiable spin.

Hold on to your chicken buckets.

The report claimed that the origins of fried chicken, a well-established Southern delicacy, went back to Scotland and arrived in the United States during the mass migration of Scots-Irish starting around 1650. This revelation was based on the discovery of a British cookbook dating to 1747 that perfectly described a recipe for fried chicken, although it didn’t use the words “fried chicken.”

The recipe predates the first known and published U.S. fried chicken recipe that appeared in The Virginia Housewife, an 1824 cookbook authored by Mary Randolph, a white woman from a slaveholding family and a distant relative of Thomas Jefferson.

And let me tell you this, my co-host was not impressed by any of this:

“What I’m finding from my research is that Scotland is stealing foods from the British and also the African Americans who were here enslaved and making fried chicken for their masters,” said Hart in a fun and jovial manner. “And now they are gonna claim it as Scottish. Just stick a flag in it, why don’t we? No sir. Won’t let you have it.”

But she does have a point. Cookbooks, new and old, will completely steal recipes from other races, cultures and nations. Scotland certainly doesn’t claim any kind of fried chicken, while Randolph’s 1824 cookbook most likely doesn’t credit the origins of how she came across the recipe. Can you guess?

Of course, I backed down immediately, realizing the cultural significance of what I was saying to a Black woman who was also an expert foodie. It was brought up in jest several times over the next few weeks.

Historians say the English preferred to boil or bake their chickens, while Scots were the first to pan-fry them in fat. And that tradition traveled with them across the Atlantic to the 13 Colonies and beyond.

It’s believed that between the 17th and 19th centuries, Scottish slaveholders gave enslaved African Americans the recipe for the Scottish version of fried chicken. But it wasn’t long before they perfected and changed it using West African culinary traditions, such as adding spices for flavor and using other types of preparation.

And now you know where Randolph most likely got her recipe.

After the Civil War and into the Great Migration, six million African Americans moved away from the South and helped spread the cuisine throughout the country.

Since then, the popularity of fried chicken has skyrocketed.

It’s undeniable that fried chicken is a deeply Southern dish and is a delicious and celebrated pillar of African American culture. What’s also true is that I have no recollection of being served homemade fried chicken in Scotland and it’s possible I ate it once or twice in a KFC in Edinburgh.

Whatever Scottish claims history books have about Southern fried chicken have long been forgotten back home and clearly overshadowed by its wild popularity in the United States and abroad.

A recent tongue-in-cheek survey by a San Francisco-based PR company found that 16 percent of Americans love fried chicken so much they would marry it. And there’s some evidence for that popularity. Since 1960, the amount of chicken consumed annually by American individuals has gone from 28 lbs to over 100 lbs in 2022, according to the National Chicken Council. Beef and pork consumption, on the other hand, has declined.

Of course, other cultures have prepared chicken in various ways since chickens were domesticated in Asia between 7,000-10,000 years ago. Fricassee chicken is lightly fried and then braised. Guatemalan fried chicken calls for it to be marinated in citrus juices and spices. In Japan, chefs bathe it in soy sauce, ginger and garlic. Or how about frying it twice and then coating it in sweetened chili paste for Korean fried chicken? Or reach for the cayenne pepper to get Nashville hot chicken.

There’s also evidence that frying strips of meat occurred in Roman times. Who knew?

But today, we can all safely agree that fried chicken is as quintessentially Southern as cornbread, sweet potato pie and saying bless your heart to a Scottish guy who actually thought fried chicken was still Scottish.