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Roasted Fowls, Chickens, and Turkey Poults

Roasted whole fowl seasoned with butter, salt, pepper, and served with lemon or orange juice and long pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Roasted Fowls, Chickens, and Turkey Poults

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Remove the gills from the fowl and twist the head under the wing.

  3. Place the fowl in a roasting pan and rub the inside with butter, salt, and pepper.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the fowl until cooked through, about 1 hour.

  2. Squeeze lemon or orange juice over the fowl before serving and sprinkle with finely ground long pepper.

  3. Serve with rich gravy, bread sauce, and egg sauce in separate dishes.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the meat that cooks through in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture to the inside of the bird, aiding browning and a richer flavour.
Lemon or seville orange
Adds acidity and bright aroma to the cooked fowl just before serving.

The step that matters

Roast until cooked through. Poultry must reach a safe internal temperature throughout the thickest parts, such as the thigh and breast. Undercooking leaves it unsafe, while overcooking dries out the meat, so checking doneness rather than relying only on time matters.

“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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