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Broiled Chicken

A whole chicken seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and lemon, broiled until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the chicken down the back and remove the entrails and breast bone.

  2. Wipe the chicken clean and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  3. Rub the chicken with soft butter.

Cook

  1. Place the chicken on a broiler, inside down, over a slow fire.

  2. Cover with a pan and cook for 20 to 25 minutes.

  3. Turn the chicken to brown the skin side when nearly done.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a hot dish and spread with maitre d’hotel butter.

  2. Garnish with parsley or watercress and thin slices of lemon.

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. Parsley + lemontop 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

Chicken
Provides the meat that cooks through gently under the cover while the skin is later browned.
Soft butter
Coats the skin to add richness and help it brown evenly under heat.
Maitre d’hotel butter
Melts over the hot chicken to add savory, herby richness at serving.

The step that matters

Turning the chicken to brown the skin. Turning too early or too late leaves the skin pale or the meat overcooked. Browning near the end, once the bird is nearly done, lets the skin crisp through Maillard browning without drying the flesh.

“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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