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To Broil Chickens

A method of broiling whole chickens with a mushroom and gravy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 the chickens

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

  2. Place the chickens on a clear fire at a distance.

  3. Cook the chickens until the inside is above half done.

  4. Turn the chickens to brown the fleshy side.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare a sauce with good gravy and mushrooms.

  2. Garnish the sauce with lemon and broiled livers.

  3. Dip sorrel in boiling water and drain it.

  4. Mix the sorrel with gravy, shallot, and boiled parsley.

  5. Thicken the sauce with butter and flour.

  6. Add red wine to the sauce.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the chickens.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps build a smooth, glossy sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by binding with liquid as its starch sets.
Red wine
Adds acidity and deep flavour that balances the rich gravy.
Mushrooms
Contribute savoury, earthy flavour to the sauce.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity that lifts the rich sauce and meat.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sweet aroma that builds the sauce's flavour base.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the melted butter and stirred smooth before liquid is added. This sets its starch evenly and avoids lumps and a raw, pasty taste.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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