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To Roast Chickens

Roasted whole chickens seasoned with butter, bacon, and optional flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Roast Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove any thread sewn into the chicken.

  2. Truss the chicken and place a large lump of butter inside the body. Sew up the incision.

  3. Position the chicken breast side up and push the legs under the skin, crossing them slightly. Skewer through the legs and body. Turn the wings back and skewer them to the body. Tie the legs together below the drumsticks and secure the twine around the skewer.

Roast

  1. Place the bacon slices in a roasting pan. Lay the chickens on top of the bacon.

  2. Rub the breasts with butter. Add 1 tablespoon of butter and boiling water to the pan.

  3. Baste the chickens with melted butter every 10 minutes, allowing 15 minutes per pound for roasting. Fifteen minutes before they are done, baste with butter.

  4. Dredge with flour if desired. Return to the oven to brown. If browning too quickly, cover with thick brown paper.

  5. The chickens should be golden brown and firm to the touch when done.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Chickens
Provide the main protein; the bird's fat and juices baste and flavour the dish as it roasts.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the meat and helps the skin turn golden brown.
Bacon
Renders fat into the pan, flavouring the chicken from below and adding savoury aroma.

The step that matters

Basting during roasting. Regular basting with melted butter keeps the surface moist and helps the skin brown evenly. Adding the flour and browning in the final stage needs watching, since the skin can darken quickly.

“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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