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Broiled Chicken, Alabama Style

Broiled chicken halves wrapped in bacon, buttered with hot water, seasoned, and baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Broiled Chicken, Alabama Style

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Fasten a strip of bacon over the breast of each chicken half with small wooden skewers.

  3. Place the chicken in a dripping pan.

  4. Melt the butter in hot water and pour it over the chicken.

  5. Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper.

Bake

  1. Bake until tender, basting often, or cover with a second pan and bake without basting.

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. Butter + peppertop 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

Bacon
Melts and bastes the chicken breast, keeping it moist and adding savory browning.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the skin brown as it cooks.
Chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow oven cooking.

The step that matters

Bake until tender, basting often, or cover with a second pan. Basting keeps the surface moist and promotes even browning, while covering traps steam so the meat stays moist without basting. Skipping both lets the lean breast dry out before the thighs are tender.

“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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