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Roast Chickens

Whole chickens are stuffed with a breadcrumb mixture and roasted, served with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. 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 the stuffing

  1. Clean and wash the chickens in several waters.

  2. Mix bread crumbs with tepid water, drain, and heat in a saucepan with hot butter until hot and almost dry.

  3. Add chopped parsley, salt, and pepper to the crumbs, then remove from heat and beat in the frothed eggs.

  4. Stuff the chickens with the mixture, sew up the vents, and tie the necks.

Roast and baste

  1. Cover the breasts with greasy writing paper.

  2. Place a cup of boiling water in the dripping pan and roast the chickens at 400°F (200°C) for one hour, basting frequently.

  3. Ten minutes before finishing, remove the paper and baste the breasts three times with butter until browned.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Pour off the fat from the gravy, add chopped egg yolks, browned flour, pepper, and salt, then boil and serve in a boat.

  2. Salt the giblets slightly and keep on ice for tomorrow's soup.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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

Chickens
Provide the main body that the stuffing fills and the roasting cooks through.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and moisture, forming a dry, binding stuffing that holds its shape.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing as they set with heat, giving it a firmer texture.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the breasts brown during the final basting.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the gravy as they cook, giving it body and colour.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour and colour.

The step that matters

Ten minutes before finishing, remove the paper and baste the breasts with butter. Removing the greased paper lets the breast skin brown, and the timing matters: leaving the paper on too long keeps the skin pale, while removing it too early can dry the breast before the bird is cooked through.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

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

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