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Roast Chicken

A whole chicken roasted with butter, salt, and water, served with a gravy made from flour, butter, and boiled giblets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Make a stuffing as for a turkey and fill the chicken.

  2. Rub salt over the chicken and place it in a roasting pan.

  3. Top the chicken with pieces of butter.

  4. Add enough water to cover the bottom of the pan.

Roast

  1. Baste the chicken frequently.

  2. Turn the pan for even roasting.

  3. Once done, remove the chicken from the pan.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Prepare the gravy.

  2. Mix flour with butter or use the fat from the drippings.

  3. Add the chopped giblets to the drippings.

  4. Boil the giblets in the drippings.

  5. Serve the chicken with the gravy.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the meat that is roasted and served.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches flavor and promotes browning on the skin while roasting.
Flour
Thickens the drippings into a smooth gravy.
Giblets
Add savory flavor to the drippings used for the gravy.

The step that matters

Basting the chicken frequently. Spooning the hot fat over the bird keeps the surface moist and helps the skin brown evenly, while the drippings build the flavor used for the gravy.

“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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