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Prairie Chickens Broiled

Broiled prairie chickens seasoned with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Prairie Chickens Broiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pluck and singe the birds, then wipe them with a wet towel.

  2. Split the birds down the back and draw them.

Broil

  1. Place them between the bars of a buttered double wire gridiron.

  2. First, expose the inside to the fire until it begins to brown.

  3. Turn the breast to the fire and slightly brown it.

  4. Rub a little butter all over the bird and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Broil the bird until quite brown on the inside, cooking for at least 10 minutes.

  6. Finish browning the breast quickly.

Serve

  1. Serve hot on a warm dish with a tablespoon of butter on top.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Butter + peppertop 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

Prairie chickens
Provide the meat that is cooked and browned over the fire.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness and helps the surface brown during broiling.

The step that matters

Broil the bird until quite brown on the inside, cooking for at least 10 minutes.. Cooking long enough ensures the interior is fully cooked, while watching the surface prevents the browning from turning to burnt, bitter flavour.

“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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