Skip to main content
Main

To Broil Chickens

A recipe for broiling two chickens with a sauce of gravy, shallot, parsley, butter, flour, red wine, and sorrel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and sorrel share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 38 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Broil Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chickens

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

  2. Place them on a clear fire at a distance, with the inside facing down until half cooked.

  3. Turn the chickens and ensure the fleshy side does not burn, achieving a fine brown color.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare the sauce by dipping the sorrel in boiling water, then draining it.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the gravy, shallot, and parsley, and thicken with butter rolled in flour.

  3. Add the red wine to the sauce and mix well.

Serve

  1. Lay the sorrel around the chickens and pour the sauce over them.

  2. Garnish with lemon.

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. Shallot + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + sorreltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Flour + sorreltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 by slow heat until browned on the outside.
Butter
Combined with flour to thicken the sauce and add richness.
Flour
Rolled with butter to thicken the sauce, giving it body.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the sauce.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the other flavors.
Shallot
Adds a mild onion-like aroma and savory flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Turning the chickens over the fire. Cooking at a distance with the inside down gives gentle heat, but the fleshy side can scorch if left too close or too long. Turning carefully lets the meat cook through and brown evenly without burning.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, shallot, butter, flour, red wine, sorrel):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, shallot, butter, flour, red wine, sorrel. 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes