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Broiled Chicken

A chicken cooked by baking and then broiling after seasoning with salt, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Broiled Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the chickens down through the breast.

  2. Wash and wipe them thoroughly.

  3. Rub both sides with coarse sea salt and dredge with flour.

  4. Place in a baking pan with a little water.

Cook

  1. Transfer to a buttered broiler over hot coals.

  2. Brown on each side.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

Chickens
Form the main body of the dish, providing the protein that is cooked through over the heat.
Flour
Coats the surface so it browns and forms a light crust over the hot coals.
Butter
Adds fat to the broiler, helping the skin brown and adding richness.

The step that matters

Brown on each side. Browning depends on surface heat and dryness. The chickens were washed and wiped first so the skin can brown rather than steam, and turning them lets both sides caramelise 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.

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