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Broiled Chickens

Whole chickens split, steamed, grilled, then topped with butter, pepper, salt and garnished with parsley and hard boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Broiled Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and steam

  1. Wash the chickens and split them down the back bone.

  2. Steam the chickens for 1 hour.

Grill and serve

  1. Place the chickens on a grill over a hot bed of coals.

  2. Once cooked, transfer them to a warm platter.

  3. Top with butter, pepper, and salt.

  4. Garnish with parsley and sliced hard boiled eggs.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chickens
The main protein, which cooks through and forms the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the skin brown and taste savory.

The step that matters

Placing the chickens over the hot coals. Intense direct heat browns and dries the skin quickly, so it can burn before the meat near the bone is fully cooked. The earlier steaming step helps cook the meat through, so the grilling mainly needs to crisp the surface.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, pepper, egg. 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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