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 ↓
Roast 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
Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
Remove the gills from the chickens and truss them.
Season the inside of the chickens with salt and pepper.
Cut the crusts off the bread and butter it generously, then cut it into tiny bits.
Fill the body of the chickens with the buttered crumbs or your preferred dressing.
Roast
Place the chickens in a roasting pan with 1 ounce of butter and ½ cup of water if not using a roasting rack.
Baste the chickens often while roasting.
Bake for about 1 hour if the chickens are young and tender; longer if they are older.
Serve
Serve with giblet gravy and crab apple jelly.
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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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Butter
- Adds fat that carries flavour, keeps the meat moist and helps the skin brown.
- Stale bread
- Dries out to soak up butter and juices, giving the stuffing a soft, absorbent texture.
The step that matters
Bake for about 1 hour, checking doneness. Cooking time depends on the bird's age and size. Poultry must be cooked through to be safe, and the thickest part of the meat is the last to cook, so judge doneness there rather than trusting the clock alone.
“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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