Why it works: Bread and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,934 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Fowl Roast
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
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Heat the whole roast fowl in a tin with hot water until thoroughly heated.
Fry the bacon in a pan until crispy.
Roast and serve
Remove the fowl from the tin and place it in the oven with one or two rashers of bacon over the breast.
Roast for a few minutes until heated through.
Serve the fowl with the remaining rashers, bread sauce, and gravy.
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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Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Whole roast fowl
- The main meat, which is already cooked and only needs reheating through.
- Bacon
- Its fat moistens the breast while it roasts, and the crisped rashers add savoury flavour.
The step that matters
Roast for a few minutes until heated through. The fowl is already cooked, so it only needs reheating. Lean meat loses moisture and turns dry and tough when overheated, so a short roast with the bacon protecting the breast keeps it juicy.
“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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