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Broiled Bird in Paper Case

A whole bird is cleaned, wrapped in paper, broiled, and served on toast with butter, salt, pepper, lemon, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Broiled Bird in Paper Case

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bird

  1. Singe the bird and wipe it clean.

  2. Cut through the backbone from the back of the neck to the tail with a sharp knife or scissors. Lay the bird open and remove the insides.

  3. Cut off the pope's nose, remove the ribs, and take out the breastbone. Cut through the tendons at the joints.

  4. For spring chickens, remove the legs.

Wrap and broil

  1. Butter a sheet of paper, place the bird on the lower half, and fold the upper half over the bird. Seal the edges by folding them over three times and secure with toothpicks.

  2. Broil the wrapped bird for 10 minutes over a slow fire, ensuring the paper does not catch fire, or pan-broil.

Serve

  1. Remove the bird from the paper, place it on a slice of toast, and season with salt, pepper, and butter. Garnish with thin slices of lemon and parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bird (chicken or other)
Provides the meat that cooks through in the paper and forms the main dish.
Butter
Greases the paper and, on the toast, adds richness and flavor to the meat.
Toast
Soaks up juices from the bird and gives a crisp base under the meat.

The step that matters

Sealing the paper. If the edges are not folded tightly, steam and juices escape and the paper can scorch over the fire. A firm, triple-folded seal keeps the bird moist while it broils.

“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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