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Chicken, Roast

Roast chicken with bacon, served with bread sauce, gravy, and watercress garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and watercress work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 983 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken, Roast

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately warm oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Truss the chicken for roasting.

  2. Prick the entire surface of the breast with a metal skewer or trussing needle.

  3. Skewer the slices of bacon over the chicken.

  4. Baste well with hot fat.

Roast

  1. Roast in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour, basting frequently.

  2. A few minutes before serving, remove the bacon to allow the breast to brown.

Make the gravy

  1. Simmer the neck (and liver and gizzard if not trussed in the wings) in the stock.

  2. When the chicken is cooked, remove it to a dish and drain off all fat without disturbing the sediment.

  3. Pour in the stock, boil for a few minutes, season and color to taste, then strain into a sauceboat.

Serve

  1. Wash and drain the watercress, season lightly with salt and pepper, and use as a garnish.

  2. Serve both gravy and bread sauce separately.

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 + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  3. Bread + watercresstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  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

Chicken
Provides the main body of the roast, with its meat cooking through in the oven.
Bacon
Lays fat over the breast as it roasts, keeping the meat moist and adding savory flavour.
Stock
Forms the base of the gravy, carrying flavour from the neck and pan juices.
Liquid caramel
Adds colour to the gravy so it looks rich and browned.

The step that matters

Remove the bacon before the breast browns. Bacon left on too long over the breast can burn or stop the skin browning evenly. Removing it a few minutes before serving lets the surface colour without overcooking the fat.

“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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