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Roast Chicken

Roast Chicken is a whole chicken roasted with butter, flour, herbs, and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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

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 the chicken

  1. Singe, clean, wash, stuff, and truss the chicken.

  2. Place the chicken breast down on a rack in a dripping pan.

  3. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and spread with 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of flour, rubbed together.

Roast

  1. Put in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) at first, then reduce the heat.

  2. When the fat and flour begin to brown, pour ½ cup of boiling water into the pan.

  3. Baste every 13 minutes and turn the chicken to brown evenly.

  4. Roast for 1.5 hours.

Make the stuffing and gravy

  1. For stuffing, melt 2 ounces of butter, add bread or cracker crumbs, mixed herbs, and boiling water. Season with salt and pepper.

  2. For gravy, pour off the liquid from the roasting pan, return it to the pan, and add 4 tablespoons of fat and 4 tablespoons of flour.

  3. Add 2 cups of stock and cook for 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, then strain.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  4. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Flour
Rubbed with butter on the skin, it browns and crisps the surface; in the gravy it thickens the stock.
Butter
Coats the skin and carries heat, helping it brown and turn crisp in the oven.
Bread or cracker crumbs
Form the bulk of the stuffing, soaking up butter and liquid to become tender.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, adding savory flavor and body.

The step that matters

Basting and turning the chicken. Basting every 13 minutes keeps the skin moist and helps it brown evenly, while turning distributes heat so the bird cooks uniformly. Missed basting can leave dry, unevenly coloured skin.

“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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