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Roast Chicken

A whole chicken stuffed with bread crumbs, spices, egg, and butter, roasted on a spit and served with a gravy made from its juices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,609 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Roast Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Singe off all the hair from the chicken and remove the insides.

  2. Wash the chicken in cold water and let it drain.

  3. In a bowl, mix the bread crumbs, pepper, salt, marjoram, egg, and butter.

  4. Stuff the mixture into the chicken's cavity and sew it up.

  5. Truss the chicken by tying the legs together and securing them to the body.

  6. Tuck the wings close to the body and skewer them in place.

Roast

  1. Spit the chicken and roast it at 400°F (200°C) for about an hour, basting with butter and dredging with flour.

  2. Turn the spit often to achieve a nice light brown color.

Make the gravy

  1. Wash the liver, neck, and gizzard.

  2. Boil them in a small saucepan with water while the chicken roasts.

  3. Once the chicken is done, chop the liver.

  4. Add the chopped liver to the boiling water with the gravy from the roasting pan.

  5. Stir in a little butter and flour, and bring to a boil.

  6. Serve the gravy in a dish alongside the chicken.

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. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Whole chicken
Provides the main meat, which is roasted on a spit until cooked through and browned.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and egg in the stuffing, keeping it moist and giving it body inside the cavity.
Egg
Binds the bread crumb stuffing so it holds together while roasting.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the skin brown when basted over the chicken.
Flour
Dredged over the chicken and later stirred into the gravy to help thicken it.

The step that matters

Turn the spit often. Frequent turning exposes all sides of the chicken evenly to heat, so it browns lightly without scorching in spots and cooks more uniformly.

Swap the marjoram

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, bread, pepper, egg, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Marjoramthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, pepper, egg, butter, flour. 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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