Name: Chicken, Roast
Ingredients: 1 whole young chicken; butter or lard; fat bacon

Why it works: Chicken and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,902 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Chicken, Roast

Ingredients

1 whole young chicken
butter or lard
fat bacon

Directions

Prepare

Truss and trim the chicken.
Rub the chicken with butter or lard.
Cover the chicken securely with fat bacon.

Roast and serve

Roast the chicken for 30 minutes if young, or 45 minutes if large.
Serve with Bread Sauce and Poultry Gravy poured over it.

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.

Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Whole young chicken: Provides the meat that is cooked and served as the main dish.
Butter or lard: Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the skin brown and turn crisp.
Fat bacon: Covers the bird to baste it with melting fat and keep the lean meat moist.

“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.