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Roast Chicken

Roast Chicken is a whole chicken roasted with flour dusting, fat pork or butter, served with a giblet gravy and watercress garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Roast Chicken

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 and roast

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Dust the chicken with flour and place it in a roasting pan.

  3. Lay slices of fat pork on the breast or place pieces of butter on it.

  4. If using butter, press 2 tablespoons into a wooden spoon to baste the chicken.

  5. Roast the chicken for 15 minutes per pound, turning it over when one side is brown.

  6. Once cooked, remove the chicken from the oven and take out the pork if used.

Make the giblet gravy

  1. Chop the gizzard and mash the liver with 1 teaspoon of flour.

  2. Pour the giblet liquor into the mixture, stir well, and boil it on the stove.

  3. Serve the giblet gravy in a tureen.

Serve

  1. Remove the string and skewers from the chicken, place it on a serving dish with watercress around it.

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 + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

  2. Flour + watercresstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + livertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  4. Chicken + livertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together383 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pork + watercresstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken
Forms the main dish; its meat cooks through while the skin browns in the oven.
Fat pork
Lies over the breast, melting fat that bastes the meat and helps it brown.
Butter
Adds fat that bastes the chicken and promotes browning and a rich flavor.
Flour
Thickens the giblet gravy when mixed with the mashed liver and giblet liquor.

The step that matters

Turning the chicken during roasting. Turning it when one side is brown helps the bird cook and brown evenly, since the side facing the heat cooks faster than the underside.

“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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