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Broiled Birds

Broiled Birds are seasoned with salt, pepper, bacon, and butter, then cooked over live coals.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,594 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Broiled Birds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the birds dry and truss them with slices of bacon.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Broil and baste

  1. Place the birds over live coals.

  2. Baste with butter while cooking.

  3. Cook white meat birds for 2 minutes on the breast side and 3 minutes on the other side.

  4. Cook squabs and other dark meat birds for a longer time.

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. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Birds
Provide the meat that is cooked directly over the coals.
Slices of bacon
Wrap the birds during cooking, adding fat that keeps the lean meat moist.
Butter
Basting adds fat and flavour to the surface of the birds as they cook.

The step that matters

Cook white meat birds for 2 minutes on the breast side and 3 minutes on the other side.. Lean white meat dries out quickly over live coals, so timing each side carefully helps keep it juicy. Dark meat needs longer cooking because it contains more connective tissue and fat.

“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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