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Roast Chicken

Roast chicken stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, and salt, served with a gravy made from boiled giblets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roast Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Wash the chicken well in three waters.

  2. Add a little baking soda to the second wash.

  3. Stuff the chicken with a mixture of bread crumbs, butter, and salt.

  4. Sew up the chicken with strong thread.

  5. Tie the neck closed.

  6. Pour boiling water over the chicken.

Roast and baste

  1. Roast the chicken for one hour, or longer if large.

  2. Baste three times with butter and water.

  3. Baste four to five times with its own gravy.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Stew the giblets, neck, and feet in enough water to cover them well.

  2. Add the giblet broth to the gravy in the pan.

  3. Boil the gravy.

  4. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  5. Chop the giblets finely.

  6. Add the chopped giblets to the gravy.

  7. Boil again.

  8. Serve in a gravy boat.

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

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

  2. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing and basting liquid, and helps the skin brown.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and butter in the stuffing, keeping the interior moist and lightly structured.
Boiling water
Poured over the chicken and used in basting, adding moisture to the pan and gravy.

The step that matters

Baste with the pan juices. Basting spreads fat and moisture over the skin as it roasts, helping it brown and stay tender. Basting too rarely lets the surface dry out.

“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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