Why it works: Chicken and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,902 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓
Broiled Chicken
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the chicken
Singe and wipe the chicken clean.
Make a cut through the backbone from the neck to the tail with a sharp knife. Lay the chicken open and remove the organs.
Cut out the rib bones on each side of the backbone and remove the breastbone. Cut through the tendons at the joints.
Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper.
Broil and serve
Place the chicken in a well-greased broiler.
Broil for 20 minutes over a clear fire, turning the broiler to brown all parts evenly. Ensure the flesh side is exposed to the fire most of the time.
Remove the chicken to a hot platter, spread with soft butter, and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
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.
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Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,902 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,958 recipes
Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
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Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Chicken
- Forms the main body of the dish; cooking it over direct heat browns and firms the flesh.
- Butter
- Adds richness and moisture to the cooked surface after broiling.
The step that matters
Keeping the flesh side toward the fire. Broiling browns the surface quickly, and turning the bird so the flesh side faces the heat most of the time helps it cook through evenly without scorching the skin in one spot.
“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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