Definition of "broil"

To broil a pigeon. When you broil them, do them in the same manner, and take care your fire is very clear, and set your gridiron high, that they may not burn, and have a little parsley and butter in a cup. You may split them, and broil them with a little pepper and salt, and you may roast them only with a little parsley and butter in a dish.

1788, Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy: Which Far Exceeds Any Thing of the Kind Yest Published‎, page 6

To broil Red Mullet. Neither seale nor gut your mullet, wipe them very clean in a cloth, butter half a sheet of writing paper for each fish, put them in, and fasten it all round; have a very clear fire, broil them very gently for twenty minutes, hen put them in a dish, with anchovy sauce and plain butter in boats.

1798, Richard Briggs, The English Art of Cookery…With Bills of Fare for Every Month in the Year…A New Edition‎, page 70

To broil fish. To broil trout in a third way. When they are cleaned and washed, dry them well in a napkin. Then bind them about with packthread, sprinkle them with melted butter and salt, and broil them over a gentle fire, turning them from time to time.

1813, Bell Plumptre, Domestic Management; Or, the Healthful Cookery-Book‎, page 247

Cluffe, externally acquiescing, had yet made up his mind, if a decent opportunity presented, to be detected and made prisoner, and that the honest troubadours should sup on a hot broil, and sip some of the absent general's curious Madeira at the feet of their respective mistresses, with all the advantage which a situation so romantic and so private would offer.

1863, J[oseph] Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Church-yard. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Tinsley, Brothers, […]

But to give the faireſt Play to every ſide of the Queſtion, I vvill own that there is a Haughtineſs, and Fierceneſs in human Nature, vvhich vvill cauſe innumerable Broils, place Men in vvhat State you pleaſe; but ovvning this, I ſtill inſiſt in charging to Political Regulations, that theſe Broils are ſo frequent, ſo cruel, and attended vvith ſo deplorable Conſequences.

1756, [Edmund Burke], A Vindication of Natural Society: Or, A View of the Miseries and Evils Arising to Mankind from Every Species of Artificial Society. […], London: […] M. Cooper […], page 32

"Away with this prating dotard," said Front-de Boeuf, "lock him up in the chapel, to tell his beads till the broil be over. It will be a new thing to the saints in Torquilstone to hear aves and paters; they have not been so honoured, I trow, since they were cut out of stone."

1820, Walter Scott, chapter XXVII, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […]

So, I am safe emerged from these broils! / Amid the wreck of thousands I am whole […]

a. 1822 (date written), John Keats, “[Tragedies.] Otho the Great: A Tragedy in Five Acts.”, in [Horace Elisha Scudder], editor, The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats, Cambridge edition, Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], published 1899, Act I, (please specify the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals), page 159, column 1, lines 1-2

Since the provinces declared their independence, broils and squabblings of one sort and another have greatly retarded the advancement which they might otherwise have made.

1840, Robert Chambers, William Chambers, Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, volume 8, page 382