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Broiled Chicken on Toast

Broiled chicken served on toasted bread with a cream or milk sauce thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Broiled Chicken on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Broil the chicken until thoroughly cooked, then remove it from the oven.

  2. Place the chicken in a square baking dish.

  3. Butter the chicken well.

  4. Season the chicken with salt and pepper.

  5. Return the chicken to the oven for a few minutes.

Prepare the toast

  1. Moisten and butter the bread slices.

  2. Lay the bread slices on a platter.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In the pan with the chicken, add the cream or milk.

  2. Thicken the mixture with flour.

  3. Pour the sauce over the chicken.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which firms and cooks through under the broiler.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the chicken and bread brown.
Bread slices
Forms the base that holds the chicken and soaks up the juices.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding richness and smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated with the liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour. Flour must be fully mixed into the liquid and heated so its starch swells and thickens the sauce. Added unmixed or unheated, it clumps and leaves a raw, floury taste.

“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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