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To Bake Chicken

A roasted chicken stuffed with bread dressing and pork slices, basted with butter and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Bake Chicken

Ingredients

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.

Prepare

  1. Stuff the hen with rich bread dressing and truss it.

  2. Place 2-3 slices of pork in a pan and lay the hen on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until tender.

  2. Add a little water to the pan for basting and rub butter over the hen.

  3. Serve with gravy made from the drippings.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rich bread dressing
Fills the bird, adding moisture and flavour as it cooks inside the hen.
Pork
Lies under the hen in the pan, adding fat and flavour to the drippings used for gravy.
Butter
Rubbed over the hen, it adds fat that promotes browning and a rich flavour.
Water
Added to the pan for basting, it keeps the drippings moist and helps prevent scorching.

The step that matters

Bake until tender. A stuffed bird takes longer to cook through, and the dressing must reach a safe temperature. Check that the hen is tender and fully cooked before serving, since the stuffing slows heat reaching the centre.

“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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