Name: Roast Chickens
Ingredients: 2 whole chickens (about 6 pounds total); gravy ingredients (as for turkey, omit mace)

Why it works: Chicken and turkey work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 688 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-decenal, which smells green, must. The science ↓

Roast Chickens

Ingredients

2 whole chickens (about 6 pounds total)
gravy ingredients (as for turkey, omit mace)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Dress and prepare the chickens as you would a turkey.
Roast the chickens in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1.5 hours.
Make the gravy using the same method as for turkey, but do not include mace.

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.

Chicken + turkeytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together688 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).
Turkey + macetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together254 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Chicken + macetop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,208 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).