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Roast Fowl

Roast fowl served with bacon, potatoes, green vegetables, and bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 968 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Roast Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and roast

  1. Truss the fowl nicely.

  2. Place a slice of fat bacon over the breast.

  3. Roast the fowl for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or roast a chicken for about 30 minutes.

  4. Remove the bacon 10 minutes before the fowl is done to allow it to brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with small rolls of bacon around the dish, along with potatoes and any seasonal green vegetables.

  2. Always serve with Bread Sauce.

  3. For a variation, stuff the fowl with mushrooms and serve with mushroom 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. Mushroom + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  3. Potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Fat bacon
Its fat bastes the breast as it roasts, keeping the lean meat moist.
Fowl
The main protein; roasting cooks it through and browns the skin.

The step that matters

Removing the bacon 10 minutes before the end. Removing the bacon near the end lets the breast skin brown directly in the oven heat. Leaving it on too long can keep the skin pale and soft.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, bread, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, 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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