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Roast Chicken

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

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

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Stuff the chicken as you would for a turkey.

  3. Rub salt over the chicken.

  4. Place the chicken in a roasting pan.

  5. Lay pieces of butter on the breast.

  6. Add enough hot water to cover the bottom of the pan.

Roast

  1. Baste the chicken frequently.

  2. Turn the pan to ensure even roasting.

  3. Roast the chicken for two hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Mix flour with butter.

  2. Use the fat from the drippings.

  3. Add the chopped giblets to the drippings.

  4. Boil the giblets in the drippings to serve.

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 meat, which cooks through slowly in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the flavor and helps the skin brown.
Flour
Thickens the drippings into a smooth gravy when cooked with fat.
Giblets
Add savory flavor to the drippings used for the gravy.

The step that matters

Mix flour with butter. Cooking flour in fat before adding liquid coats the starch granules so they swell evenly. This thickens the drippings smoothly and avoids lumps and a raw flour taste.

“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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