Nashville invented this specific dish. The cayenne-lard paste applied post-fry, served on white bread with dill pickles, in the style now called Nashville hot chicken, traces to a single family and a single city. That is not branding. That is documented culinary history.
The honest qualifier is that spicy fried chicken has roots across the African American South and West African cooking traditions that are older than Nashville’s specific version. Spicy fried chicken was not invented in Nashville. Nashville hot chicken as a distinct style and technique was.
What Nashville Actually Invented
The specific innovation is the post-fry spice paste. In standard spicy fried chicken, the heat goes into the dredge or marinade before cooking. In Nashville hot chicken, a paste made from cayenne pepper, lard, and additional spices is applied to the fried bird immediately after it comes out of the oil. This is a different process that produces a different result: the spice fuses with the surface of the crust rather than being diluted through the breading.
Historian Rachel Louise Martin, author of the 2021 book Hot, Hot Chicken: A Nashville Story, traces this technique to the Prince family of North Nashville. The dish may have been introduced as early as the 1930s, but even Wikipedia’s documentation of hot chicken notes that “the current style of spice paste may only date back to the mid-1970s.” The origin story is complicated. The fame of the origin is not.
The Thornton Prince Story
Anecdotal evidence for the dish stretches back further than documented records. The Prince family account, now accepted as the founding narrative, holds that Thornton Prince III developed the recipe after his girlfriend served him heavily spiced fried chicken as revenge for his habitual infidelity. He loved it enough to commercialize it. He and his brothers opened the BBQ Chicken Shack on Jefferson Street and 28th Avenue in North Nashville, a business that eventually became Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack.
The name of the woman who reportedly invented the recipe by accident has been lost to history. Historian Martin identified five women linked to Prince romantically, any of whom could have been the actual inventor. None of them received credit, recognition, or royalties.
Could Somewhere Else Claim It?
Some people point to the tradition of spicy fried chicken in Memphis, Gus’s World Famous Hot and Spicy Fried Chicken being the most prominent example. But Gus’s is a different style: it uses a buttermilk marinade with cayenne worked into the batter. It does not use a post-fry paste. The flavor profile, the heat delivery, and the presentation are all different. Gus’s is excellent spicy fried chicken. It is not Nashville hot chicken.
The speed at which Nashville claimed the dish nationally and internationally reflects not just good marketing but an accurate story. The dish originated in one city, within one community, and spread slowly from there. When KFC launched Nashville Hot Chicken in January 2016, calling it the chain’s most successful product test in recent history, they chose that specific geographical name because no other city had a comparable established claim.
Memphis has its own proud spicy fried chicken tradition. Nashville has Nashville hot chicken. They are not the same thing.
Sources
- Wikipedia, “Hot chicken,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_chicken
- Fox News, “Meet the American who gave us Nashville hot chicken,” https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/meet-american-gave-nashville-hot-chicken-thornton-prince-man-many-passions
- Wingaddicts, “The History of Nashville Hot Chicken,” https://www.wingaddicts.com/blog/nashvillehot
- Music City Hot Chicken Festival, definition of authentic Nashville Hot Chicken, https://www.hot-chicken.com/
- CNN Money, “KFC rolls out Nashville Hot Chicken,” https://money.cnn.com/2016/01/15/news/kfc-nashville-hot-chicken/