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Broiled Bird with Barbecue Sauce

A roasted bird basted in butter, salt, pepper, and a sauce of lemon, ketchup, and Worcestershire.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Broiled Bird with Barbecue Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the bird

  1. Open the bird down the back and place it in a hot skillet.

  2. When ready to turn, baste with butter, salt, and pepper; repeat until the bird is cooked through.

Make and apply the sauce

  1. Add the sauce ingredients to a pot: butter, lemon juice, tomato ketchup, and Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Baste the bird frequently with the sauce and steam until ready to serve.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and helping the skin brown while basting.
Tomato ketchup
Provides sweetness and acidity, and its sugars help the sauce caramelize and brown.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory, tangy depth that rounds out the flavor of the sauce.
Lemon
Contributes acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the sweetness of the ketchup.

The step that matters

Baste the bird frequently with the sauce and steam until ready to serve.. The sauce's sugars from the ketchup can scorch over high heat before the bird is cooked through. Basting at a moderate pace and keeping the bird moist helps the sauce glaze without burning.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, tomato, ketchup, sauce):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, tomato, ketchup, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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