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Hints for Roasting Poultry

A guide for roasting various poultry, including timing and preparation tips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Hints for Roasting Poultry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bird

  1. Carefully draw the fowl, ensuring the gall is uninjured.

  2. Pluck ducks well, avoiding tearing the skin.

Roast

  1. Roast the fowl with a brisk fire.

  2. Roast a capon for 30 to 35 minutes, a 14 lb turkey for 2 hours, a goose for 1.5 hours, a chicken for 25 to 30 minutes, and ducks for 30 minutes.

  3. Cover the breast with a piece of buttered paper while roasting.

  4. Add a little butter to the basting ladle for basting.

  5. Remove the paper 10 minutes before serving and dredge the bird with flour.

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

Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the skin brown when used for basting.
Flour
Dredged over the bird near the end to help form a browned, crisp surface.

The step that matters

Covering the breast with buttered paper. The breast cooks faster than the legs and can dry out, so the paper shields it from direct heat while the rest of the bird finishes roasting.

“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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