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Broiled Chicken Breasts with Bread Sauce

Broiled chicken breasts served with a creamy bread sauce made from milk, butter, onion, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Broiled Chicken Breasts with Bread Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Skin the chicken breasts, keeping the flesh on the bone.

  2. Butter the breasts liberally and sprinkle with salt.

Cook the chicken

  1. Place in a pan and bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for 10 minutes, basting frequently with melted butter.

  2. Transfer to a broiler and brown over hot coals.

Make the bread sauce and serve

  1. In the bake pan, add the remaining melted butter, chopped onion, and milk; bring to a boil.

  2. Slowly stir in the bread crumbs and add a dash of paprika.

  3. Place the chicken breasts on a hot platter and pour the bread sauce around them.

  4. Serve.

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. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken breasts
Provide the main protein, which firms and browns as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the chicken brown when basted.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Soft whole wheat bread crumbs
Thicken the milk as they soak up liquid, giving the sauce body.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and sweetness as it softens in the hot butter and milk.

The step that matters

Slowly stir in the bread crumbs. Adding crumbs gradually lets them hydrate evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps or a pasty texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, milk, wheat, bread. 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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