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Roast Chickens

A roast chicken prepared with butter, salt, and a gravy thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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

  1. Draw the chickens.

  2. Wash the chickens.

  3. Stuff the chickens.

  4. Truss the chickens.

  5. Place the chickens in a dripping pan.

  6. Pour boiling water over the chickens.

Roast and baste

  1. Roast the chickens at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour or until tender and brown.

  2. Baste the chickens with butter.

Make the gravy

  1. Sprinkle the giblets with salt.

  2. Set the giblets aside for tomorrow.

  3. Pour the gravy into a bowl.

  4. Set the bowl in cold water to remove the fat.

  5. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  6. Season the gravy.

  7. Boil the gravy once.

  8. Serve the gravy in a 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 protein, which firms and browns as it roasts.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and a richer flavour on the skin.
Flour
Browned flour thickens the gravy by swelling as it mixes with the liquid.

The step that matters

Roast the chickens at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour or until tender and brown.. Roasting until the meat is tender and the skin is browned depends on heat and time; pulling too early leaves the meat tough and pale, while overcooking dries it 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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