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Broiled Chickens or Quails

Broiled chicken or quail served with a gravy of boiled organs, flour, butter, pepper, salt, and optional sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Broiled Chickens or Quails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken open on the back and pound it flat.

  2. Place the chicken on a grill over hot coals and broil until golden brown, about 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Cover with a pie tin weighted down to ensure even cooking.

Make the gravy

  1. While broiling, boil the liver, gizzard, and heart in 1 pint of water until tender.

  2. Chop the organs finely.

  3. Mix the chopped organs with flour, butter, pepper, salt, and sweet cream in the boiling water.

Finish and serve

  1. Once the chicken is done, dip it in the gravy while hot.

  2. Return the chicken to the grill for 1 minute.

  3. Place the chicken in the gravy and let it boil for 30 seconds before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken or quail
Provides the meat that is broiled until golden and served in the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a gravy as it cooks with the chopped organs.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy, carrying flavor and smoothness.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy, mellowing its flavor.

The step that matters

Dipping the chicken in the gravy while hot. Hot chicken lets the gravy cling and soak in, while the brief reboil in the gravy warms the meat through. Overcooking the chicken at this point dries out the meat, so the timing matters.

“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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