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To Roast Fowls

Roast a whole fowl seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Roast Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Clean the fowl and season it inside and out with salt and pepper.

  3. Rub the skin with butter.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the fowl in a roasting pan and roast for about 1 hour, basting occasionally.

  2. Ensure the internal temperature reaches 165°F (74°C) before serving.

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 + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Fowl
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through in the oven to become tender meat.
Butter
Adds fat to the skin, promoting moisture and golden browning during roasting.

The step that matters

Ensure the internal temperature reaches 165°F (74°C) before serving. Poultry must reach a safe internal temperature to be fully cooked, and the thickest parts such as the thigh and breast can lag behind the surface. Checking the innermost part of the meat with a thermometer is the most reliable way to confirm it is done.

“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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