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To Roast Black Cock and Gray Hen

A roast of a black cock and a gray hen, basted with butter and served with gravy and bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Roast Black Cock and Gray Hen

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hang the birds until they are ready for roasting.

  2. Pick and draw them carefully to avoid breaking the skin.

  3. Truss the birds like pheasants.

Roast

  1. Place them at a moderate distance from a clear, brisk fire.

  2. Baste them constantly with butter.

  3. For the last 10 minutes, lay thick toast in the dripping pan under the birds.

  4. Optionally, squeeze a little lemon juice over the toast before placing it in the pan.

  5. Roast for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with rich brown gravy and bread sauce.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

  5. Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Black cock
Forms the main roast; its meat cooks through and browns during roasting.
Gray hen
Forms the second roast bird, cooked alongside the black cock in the same way.
Butter
Basting fat that adds richness and promotes browning on the birds' skin.
Thick toast
Catches the drippings in the pan so the bread absorbs flavor as the birds roast.

The step that matters

Basting constantly with butter. Lean game birds dry out easily over a fire. Regular basting coats the skin in fat, which keeps the meat moist and helps the skin brown evenly.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, sauce):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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