Why it works: Butter and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 41,197 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
Prepare
Empty and singe the fowl, then truss it with the legs turned downwards.
Mix butter, salt, and lemon juice, and place inside the body of the fowl.
Roast
In an oval stew-pan, layer the bottom with fat bacon.
Place the fowl on top and pour poele over it.
Cook for 45 minutes for a fowl or 1 hour for a capon.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Butter + lemontop 8% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together41,197 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Butter
- Adds richness and moisture, helping the inside of the bird stay tender as it cooks.
- Fat bacon
- Lines the pan and releases fat that helps brown and flavour the bird from below.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the buttery flavour of the filling.
“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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