Name: Roast Chicken
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken; Salt; Pepper; Butter; Boiling water; Flour; Giblets (optional)

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 Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

Prepare the chicken by picking, singeing, and drawing it, leaving it whole.
Wash the chicken thoroughly in cold water twice and drain.
Stuff the breast and body of the chicken, sewing up the openings with strong thread.
Lay the wings under the back and secure with a skewer and twine.
Press the legs against the breast and secure with a skewer or twine.
Rub the chicken with salt and pepper.

Roast and make gravy

Cover the bottom of a roasting pan with boiling water, add a piece of butter, and place the chicken in the pan.
Baste the chicken often while roasting for 1 to 1.5 hours.
If using giblets, chop them finely after cooking in water.
To make gravy, pour boiling water into the dripping pan after the chicken is done and thicken with flour.

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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,958 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Butter: Adds fat and richness, helping the skin brown and the meat stay moist.
Flour: Thickens the pan drippings into gravy as it cooks with the liquid.
Salt: Seasons the chicken and helps the flavour penetrate the meat.

“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.