Why it works: Chicken and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,902 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓
Baked Chickens
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Dress the young chickens and cut them open along the back.
Place them in a stove pan and season with salt and pepper.
Bake and baste
Bake until they start to brown, then baste generously with butter.
Continue basting until both sides are nicely browned.
For those who prefer broiled chicken, remove one or two from the pan and broil them on a gridiron before returning them to the oven.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,902 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,958 recipes
Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
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Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Young chickens
- Provide the meat that is cooked, browned and served as the main dish.
- Butter
- Bastes the chicken, adding moisture and helping the skin brown and taste rich.
The step that matters
Basting until both sides are browned. Butter spooned over the chicken carries heat to the skin and promotes browning, while keeping the surface from drying out. Basting only one side or stopping early leaves the meat pale and dry.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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