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To Broil Chicken

A whole chicken is seasoned, buttered, and broiled until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,902 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

To Broil Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the grill and grease the bars well.

  2. Split the chicken up the back and flatten the breastbone.

  3. Season the chicken with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Cook

  1. Place the chicken on the grill, baste with butter, and turn often to prevent burning.

  2. Alternatively, grease a skillet with butter, lay the chicken in, and turn often while basting with butter.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot covered dish.

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

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

  2. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  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

Chicken
Forms the main dish; its protein firms and its juices carry the flavor as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor, keeps the surface moist, and helps the skin brown.

The step that matters

Turn often while basting with butter. Butter contains milk solids that brown and then burn quickly over direct heat. Turning the chicken often spreads the heat evenly and lets the skin cook through without charring.

“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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