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Roast Chicken

Roast chicken prepared with bread crumbs, butter, herbs, and a butter‑water glaze, served with a gravy of boiled giblets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Summer savory and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 263 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the chicken.

  2. Make a dressing with bread crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, and summer savory or thyme to taste.

  3. Put 1 pint of hot water in the dripping pan. Add 1 tablespoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of pepper to the water.

Roast

  1. Baste frequently and roast quickly without scorching.

  2. When nearly done, add a piece of butter the size of a large egg to the water in the pan. When the butter melts, baste with it.

  3. Dredge the chicken with flour. Baste again.

  4. Let it finish roasting. Roast for 45 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the heat of the fire.

  5. When done, remove the chicken.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Let the giblets boil until tender. Chop the boiled giblets finely.

  2. Add the giblets to the gravy, along with 1 tablespoon of browned flour and a bit of butter. Stir over the fire for a few minutes.

  3. Serve in a gravy tureen.

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. Summer savory + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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

Chicken
Provides the meat that is cooked by roasting and basting until done.
Bread crumbs
Form the body of the dressing, soaking up butter and seasonings as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and its melted form is basted over the chicken for flavour and browning.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Basting and roasting quickly without scorching. Frequent basting keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly, while a fast roast avoids drying the meat before it is cooked through. Scorching happens when the surface burns before the interior is done.

Swap the summer savory

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Summer savorythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, butter, pepper, egg, flour. 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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