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Roast Fowl

Roast a fowl on a spit, covered with paper, then roasted and browned, optionally stuffed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Roast Fowl

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

  1. Fix the fowl to a spit with skewers.

  2. Cover the fowl with paper.

  3. If desired, stuff the fowl with a farce or ragout before roasting.

Roast and brown

  1. Roast the fowl in a 400°F (200°C) oven until nearly done.

  2. Remove the paper, froth the fowl, and brown it nicely.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Mushroom + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,480 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Chicken + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,513 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

Fowl
Forms the main body of the dish and cooks through in the oven, giving the meat its structure.
Lard
Adds fat that helps the skin brown and crisp in the oven.

The step that matters

Removing the paper and browning the fowl. The paper keeps the skin from browning early while the meat cooks. Once it is removed, the skin needs direct heat and frequent basting to brown evenly and crisp without drying out.

“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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