Skip to main content
Main

To Broil Chickens

Broiled chickens served with a mushroom and red wine gravy, garnished with lemon and sorrel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Broil Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chickens

  1. Slit the chickens down the back.

  2. Season the chickens with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

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

  4. Cook the inside until it is more than half done.

  5. Turn the chickens carefully to avoid burning.

  6. Ensure the chickens are a fine brown color.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare good gravy with mushrooms.

  2. Garnish the gravy with lemon and broiled livers.

  3. Dip sorrel in boiling water.

  4. Drain the sorrel.

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

  6. Thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour.

  7. Add red wine to the sauce.

Serve

  1. Lay the sorrel around the chickens.

  2. Pour the sauce over the chickens, garnishing 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Browned skin and cooked meat form the main body of the dish.
Butter rolled in flour
Flour and melted butter thicken the sauce into a smooth, cohesive body.
Sorrel
Its sharp, lemony flavour adds acidity that balances the rich gravy.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Turn the chickens carefully to avoid burning. Sugars and proteins on the surface brown quickly over direct heat, so the skin can scorch before the interior is cooked through. Turning gently and keeping the birds at a distance from the fire spreads the heat evenly.

“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