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To Broil Chickens

This dish involves broiling whole chickens seasoned with pepper and sea salt, served with mushroom gravy and lemon, and accompanied by broiled livers and gizzards.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

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

Broil

  1. Place them on a clear fire at a distance.

  2. Cook the inside until it is more than half done, then turn them over.

  3. Ensure the fleshy side does not burn and cook until they are a fine brown color.

Serve

  1. Serve with good gravy mixed with mushrooms, garnished with lemon and broiled chicken livers and gizzards seasoned with pepper and salt.

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

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

  4. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + livertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together572 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, cooked until browned on the outside and done inside.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the gravy served alongside the chicken.
Chicken livers
Add rich, savory flavor and a softer texture when broiled alongside the chicken.
Chicken gizzards
Add dense, chewy texture and savory depth when broiled alongside the chicken.

The step that matters

Cook the inside until more than half done, then turn. Cooking the inside first lets the thick meat cook through while the skin is still protected from burning. Turning too early or too late risks a raw interior or scorched outside, since the direct heat of the fire browns the surface quickly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Grapefits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, mushroom, 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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