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Roast Chicken

Roast Chicken with a breadcrumb butter stuffing, baked in boiling water, served with a gravy made from its own juices and stewed giblets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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, adding baking soda to the second wash.

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

  3. Fill the crops and body of the chicken.

  4. Sew the openings with strong thread and tie the neck.

Roast

  1. Pour 1 cup of boiling water over the chicken.

  2. Roast for 1 hour, or longer if large.

  3. Baste the chicken three times with butter and water.

  4. Baste the chicken four or 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 stewing liquid to the gravy in the dripping pan.

  3. Boil the mixture once.

  4. Thicken the mixture with browned flour.

  5. Add the chopped giblets.

  6. Boil the mixture again.

  7. 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Soak up butter and juices inside the bird, keeping the stuffing moist.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps the skin brown as it roasts.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasty, nutty flavor.
Baking soda
Raises the wash water's pH, which helps loosen surface impurities from the skin.

The step that matters

Basting the chicken with its own gravy. Spooning juices over the bird adds moisture and flavor to the surface while the fat renders and browns the skin. Basting too early or too often can cool the oven and slow browning, so it is best done at the stated intervals.

“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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