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To Broil Chickens

A dish of chickens roasted over a clear fire, served with mushroom gravy and lemon, garnished with broiled livers and sorrel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

To Broil Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Slit the chickens down the back and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Place them on a clear fire at a distance, with the inside facing the fire.

  3. Cook until the inside is more than half done, then turn them over carefully to avoid burning.

  4. Ensure they are browned nicely.

Serve

  1. Serve with good gravy mixed with mushrooms, garnished with lemon and broiled chicken livers.

  2. For an alternative sauce, dip the sorrel in boiling water, drain it, and 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Lemon + sorreltop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + sorreltop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together419 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Form the main body of the dish, cooking through over the fire to tender meat.
Mushrooms
Add savory, earthy flavor to the gravy served alongside the chicken.
Chicken livers
Provide rich, concentrated meaty flavor when broiled as a garnish.

The step that matters

Turn the chickens carefully. Turning too early or roughly can tear the skin and drop juices into the fire, while leaving them too long on one side risks scorching. Gentle, timely turning lets the inside cook through as the outside browns evenly.

Swap the sorrel

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Sorrelthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, mushroom, lemon, liver. 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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