Name: Roast Chickens
Ingredients: 2 whole chickens; ½ cup butter or lard; ¼ cup flour; 1 onion, chopped; Salt, to taste; Pepper, to taste; Gravy from the dripping-pan; Cranberry sauce or apple sauce, for serving

Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Roast Chickens

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

Wash the chickens thoroughly inside and out.
Stuff the chickens with chopped onions and a mixture of flour.
Baste the chickens with butter or lard.

Roast and make the gravy

Roast the chickens in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 1 hour, until thoroughly cooked.
Stew the chicken innards until tender, adding water as needed.
Chop the innards and mix with gravy from the dripping-pan, thickening with brown flour.
Season the mixture with salt and pepper, and add butter to taste.

Serve

Serve the roast chickens with cranberry or apple sauce.

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.

Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,814 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Pepper + cranberrytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together218 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Onion + cranberrytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together167 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 chickens: Provide the meat that is roasted until cooked through and tender.
Butter or lard: Basting fat that browns the skin and adds moisture and richness.
Flour: Stuffed inside and browned to thicken the gravy.
Onion: Stuffed into the chickens to add aroma and flavour during roasting.

The step that matters

Roast the chickens in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 1 hour, until thoroughly cooked. Poultry must reach a safe internal temperature throughout, and the thickest parts near the bone take longest. Checking doneness in the thickest part, not only by time, prevents undercooked meat.

Swap the cranberry

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

Avocadofits better
Coconutfits better
Lemonfits about as well
Cranberrythe original

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