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Roast Fowl

A roasted fowl served with bacon, potatoes, green vegetables, and bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and mushroom match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 968 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. 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.

Prepare the fowl

  1. Pluck and singe the fowl, leaving it undrawn.

  2. Cut off the neck close to the body, leaving enough skin to fold over the back.

  3. Divide the joints between the wings and body, and remove the merry thought.

  4. Cut off the legs at the knee joints and remove the sinews.

  5. Use a sharp knife to carefully work the flesh off the bones without breaking the skin.

Stuff and truss

  1. Stuff the fowl and reshape it to look natural, leaving the thigh inside.

  2. Truss the fowl and place a slice of fat bacon over the breast.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the fowl at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until browned.

  2. Serve with small rolls of bacon, potatoes, green vegetables, and bread sauce.

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. Potato + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Sauce + mushroomtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,480 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Main protein; its flesh firms and sets as it roasts, while the skin browns.
Fat bacon
Fat laid over the breast that bastes the meat, adding moisture and helping the skin brown.

The step that matters

Working the flesh off the bones without breaking the skin. The skin holds in moisture and fat during roasting. A tear lets juices escape and can dry the meat, and it also weakens the skin's ability to crisp and brown evenly.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sauce, mushroom):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sauce, mushroom. 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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