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 ↓
Roast Fowl
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
Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).
Clean the fowl and pat it dry.
Season the inside and outside with coarse sea salt and pepper.
Place the fowl in a roasting pan and rub the skin with butter or oil.
Roast and rest
Roast in the oven for about 1.5 hours, basting occasionally, until the skin is golden and the juices run clear.
Let it rest for 10 minutes before carving.
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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Pepper + buttertop 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
- Fowl
- Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through to tender meat under dry oven heat.
- Butter or oil
- Carries heat to the skin and helps it brown and turn golden while basting.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the meat and helps draw moisture from the skin so it can crisp.
The step that matters
Roast until the juices run clear. Poultry must reach a safe internal temperature throughout. Checking that the juices run clear, and letting the bird rest before carving, helps keep the meat moist and evenly cooked.
“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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