Entry · catalog no. 9639
hot chicken
/ /hɑt ˈtʃɪkɪn/ /HOT CHIK-in
noun · Nashville, Tennessee · 1940s
✓ Verified
1.
Fried chicken coated after frying in a hot, oil-based cayenne paste and served on white bread with pickle chips. It is the signature dish of Black Nashville, now served nationwide in milder forms.
“Order it medium unless you want to regret it; real Nashville hot chicken doesn't play.”
Origin & Attribution
Created in Nashville's Black community and tied to the family of Thornton Prince, whose Prince's Hot Chicken Shack made the dish famous. Family tradition says the dish began in the 1930s or 1940s when Prince's girlfriend, angry about his cheating, put extra pepper on his chicken, and he liked it; the family then began selling it. The Southern Foodways Alliance has documented the dish and the Prince family's history in oral history work, and the chain version spread widely in the 2010s.
1930s
Per family history, Thornton Prince's hot chicken originates in Nashville.
1950s
Prince's Hot Chicken Shack operates as a Black-owned Nashville restaurant.
2010s
Hot chicken spreads nationally through chain restaurants.
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
Nashville, Tennessee · 1940s
Spoken by
Nashville cooks and restaurant families, and diners nationwide
$HOTCHIThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady75 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
65/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1940
in the culture
Recorded here
2026
point of first record
Mainstream crossover
2015
search interest spikes
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
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By region — how it actually sounds
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New Orleans, LA
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Houston, TX
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Citations & Sources
■
Southern Foodways Alliance, Nashville hot chicken oral histories
oral history, 2010s
■
+ Cite a sourcePrince's Hot Chicken Shack (restaurant history, Andre Prince Jeffries)
oral history, 2010s
See also