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To Roast Chicken or Turkey

A method for roasting a whole chicken or turkey with butter, flour, and sea salt.

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 ↓

To Roast Chicken or Turkey

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Dress, clean, stuff, and truss the chicken.

  2. Place it on its back on a rack in a dripping pan.

  3. Rub the entire surface with coarse sea salt.

  4. Mix 3 tablespoons of butter with 2 tablespoons of flour until creamy, then spread it on the breast and legs.

  5. Dredge the bottom of the pan with flour.

Roast

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the flour is browned, then reduce the heat.

  2. Baste every 10 minutes until the chicken is cooked.

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the skin brown and turn golden as it roasts.
Flour
Mixed with butter and dredged in the pan, it browns and adds a toasted flavor to the drippings.
Whole chicken
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through as the heat reaches its center.

The step that matters

Reducing the heat after the flour browns. Flour browns quickly at high oven heat, so it can scorch or turn bitter if the temperature is not lowered in time. Lowering the heat lets the bird cook through evenly without burning the coating.

“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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