Name: Broiled Chicken on Toast
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken; Butter, for basting; Coarse sea salt, to taste; Pepper, to taste; 4 slices of bread, for toast; ½ cup cream or milk; 1 tablespoon flour

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

Broil the chicken until thoroughly cooked.
Remove the chicken and place it in a square tin or dripping pan.
Butter the chicken well and season with salt and pepper.
Return the chicken to the oven for a few minutes.

Prepare the toast

Moisten and butter the bread slices, then toast them.
Place the toasted bread on a platter.

Make the sauce and serve

In the pan with the chicken, add the cream or milk.
Thicken the mixture with flour and pour it 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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,258 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).
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: Forms the main protein, cooked through by broiling and finished in the oven.
Butter: Adds richness and helps the chicken brown and stay moist while basting.
Bread: Soaks up the juices and sauce, giving the dish a firm base.
Cream or milk: Adds moisture and richness to the pan mixture that becomes the sauce.
Flour: Thickens the cream or milk mixture into a smooth, coating sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour. Flour must be stirred in evenly so it hydrates and swells in the warm liquid; added in clumps it stays lumpy and the sauce will not thicken smoothly.

“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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Broiled Chicken on Toast