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Roast Chicken

A whole chicken stuffed with force-meat, bacon, and seasoning, roasted with water and butter, served with a gravy made from its own juices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Roast Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Wash the chicken thoroughly.

  2. Wipe it dry inside and out.

  3. Stuff the body and craw with the force-meat, but do not pack it tightly.

  4. Sew up the body and pull the skin over the craw to the neck.

  5. Secure the skin with cotton cord.

  6. Bind the legs and wings close to the body with tape or cotton cord.

Roast

  1. If the chicken is not very fat, place a few slices of bacon in the pan.

  2. Set the chicken on top of the bacon.

  3. Pour 1 scant cup of boiling water over the chicken.

  4. Cover the chicken.

  5. Cook fast for 15 minutes.

  6. Reduce the heat.

  7. Cook for 15 minutes per pound.

  8. Baste every 30 minutes if covered, or every 10 minutes if in an open pan.

  9. Each time, pour at least 10 large spoonfuls of gravy over the chicken.

  10. A quarter hour before serving, wash the chicken with butter.

  11. Season with pepper and salt.

  12. Dredge with flour.

  13. Remove the cover.

  14. Brown the chicken.

  15. Keep the chicken warm while making the gravy.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Chop the giblets fine.

  2. Discard cartilage.

  3. Stir a spoonful of browned flour mixed with cold water into the baking pan gravy.

  4. Boil the gravy.

  5. Season to taste.

  6. Add giblets.

  7. Serve in a gravy boat.

Make the stuffing

  1. Moisten 1 cup of fine bread-crumbs with 1 tablespoon of butter.

  2. Season the stuffing with pepper, salt, and parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Meat + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat that is roasted and carved.
Flour
Dredged on the skin and browned to thicken the pan gravy.
Butter
Basting fat that adds richness and helps the skin brown.
Bacon or pork fat
Lies under the chicken, adding fat and flavour to the pan juices and gravy.
Bread-crumbs
Moistened with butter to form the body of the stuffing, giving soft texture.

The step that matters

Cook for 15 minutes per pound. Roasting time depends on weight, and a chicken cooked too briefly may stay underdone near the bone, while overcooking dries the meat.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, meat, pork, butter, pepper, flour, bread):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, pork, butter, pepper, flour, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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