Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓
Roast Fowl;
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
Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).
Fill the breast of the fowl with good forcemeat.
Cover the breast with buttered paper for the first part of roasting.
Roast and brown
Roast the fowl for about 1 hour, or until nearly done.
Remove the paper 15 minutes before serving to prevent over-browning.
Pour lukewarm butter over the fowl and coat it with fine bread-crumbs.
Sprinkle more butter on the crumbs and dip the fowl into additional crumbs.
Return the fowl to the oven until it is a clear, light brown all over.
Serve
Carefully remove from the spit, dish it, and serve with lemon sauce and gravy.
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.
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Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together14,037 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together15,338 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together28,563 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,588 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
- Fowl
- Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through by roasting.
- Forcemeat
- Stuffing in the breast that adds moisture and flavour as the bird roasts.
- Butter
- Adds fat that carries browning and gives the crumb coating a rich, golden finish.
- Bread-crumbs
- Form a crisp, light brown coating on the outside of the fowl.
The step that matters
Removing the buttered paper 15 minutes before serving. Leaving the paper on too long keeps the breast pale, while removing it too early lets it over-brown. Timing it near the end lets the surface colour evenly as the bird finishes cooking.
“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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