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Roast Chicken

Roast a whole chicken with butter or dripping, baste, and cook until done, serving with watercress and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,902 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Roast Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and start roasting

  1. Truss the chicken.

  2. Roast the chicken before a clear fire.

  3. Place the butter or dripping in the roasting tin underneath the chicken.

  4. Baste the chicken constantly.

Finish roasting

  1. Roast a small chicken for about 40 minutes and a large one for about 1 hour.

  2. Once the chicken starts to roast, move it back.

  3. Continue cooking at a lower heat.

Serve

  1. When cooked, place the chicken on a hot dish.

  2. Remove the skewers or trussing string.

  3. Serve the chicken with watercress and gravy.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat, which cooks through in the dry heat of the fire.
Butter or dripping
Fat that bastes the bird, promoting browning and adding rich flavour.

The step that matters

Move the chicken back and lower the heat once roasting starts. Intense early heat browns the skin, while a gentler heat lets the thick meat cook through to the centre without scorching the outside.

“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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