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Broiled Chicken

A whole chicken marinated in oil and lemon, then broiled and finished with butter, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and split the chickens down the back.

  2. Marinate in a mixture of ½ cup salad oil and juice of 1 lemon for 1 hour if unsure about freshness.

  3. If certain of freshness, wash the chickens with butter.

Broil

  1. Place on a greased and heated grill, breast side up.

  2. Broil over a strong red fire for about 10 minutes per pound, lifting when it begins to drip and turning four times for even cooking.

  3. Once done, sprinkle with pepper and coarse sea salt, and add more butter.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Young chickens
Provide the meat that is cooked over the fire and browns on the grill.
Salad oil
Coats the chicken, adding moisture and helping prevent it from drying out under heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and tenderizes the surface during marinating.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the surface moist and flavorful while broiling.

The step that matters

Broil over a strong red fire, turning four times. Chicken dries out or burns if the heat is uneven or too long on one side. Turning and lifting as it drips spreads heat evenly and keeps the meat juicy while the skin browns.

“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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