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Broiled Chicken

A whole chicken is broiled with lard, then served with melted butter, salt, pepper, and lettuce garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,037 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Broiled Chicken

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the chicken open through the backbone.

  2. Heat an iron skillet and add lard to prevent sticking.

Cook

  1. Place a tin plate on top of the chicken and weigh it down with an iron.

  2. Set the skillet on a cooler part of the stove and let it broil slowly, turning when brown.

  3. Once done, transfer the chicken to a hot platter.

Season and serve

  1. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, pour melted butter over, and garnish with lettuce leaves.

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. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  3. Chicken + lettucetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,421 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Whole chicken
Provides the meat that is cooked flat and browned in the skillet.
Lard
Fat in the skillet that keeps the chicken from sticking and helps it brown.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture to the finished chicken at serving.

The step that matters

Broiling slowly on a cooler part of the stove. Low, gentle heat lets the thick meat cook through before the outside burns. Pressing the plate down and turning the chicken help it cook evenly and brown on both sides.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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