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Roast Chicken

Roast chicken with flour dusting, fat pork or butter, giblet gravy, served with watercress.

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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°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.

Roast

  1. Baste the chicken with butter using a wooden spoon.

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

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

  4. If using pork, pour off the fat and remove the pork.

Make the giblet gravy

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

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

Serve

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

  2. Serve the gravy in a tureen.

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

Chicken
Forms the main structure and meat of the dish, cooking through in the oven's dry heat.
Flour
Dusted on the chicken and stirred into the giblets, where it thickens the gravy and helps it brown.
Butter
Basted over the chicken, adding fat that promotes even browning and a richer flavour.
Fat pork
Laid on the breast as an alternative fat that bastes the meat and adds richness as it renders.
Gizzard and liver
Simmered into the giblet gravy, adding deep savoury flavour and body.

The step that matters

Turning the chicken when one side is brown. Browning is driven by surface heat, so turning at the right moment lets the bird colour evenly without scorching. Turning too late can leave one side dark and dry while the other stays pale.

“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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