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Roast Fowl

Roast Fowl is a whole bird roasted with optional onion and butter, topped with bacon, served with gravy and watercress garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 533 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Roast Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Pick, draw, wipe, singe, and truss the fowl.

  2. If not stuffed, place an onion and a piece of butter inside the fowl.

  3. Tie a rasher of fat bacon over the breast.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the fowl slowly before a bright clear fire, basting occasionally.

  2. When ready, strain the gravy and pour it under the fowl.

  3. Garnish with watercresses.

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. Onion + watercresstop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together533 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + watercresstop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together842 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, cooking slowly to become tender and evenly done.
Fat bacon
Melts over the breast as it roasts, basting the meat and keeping it moist.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture inside the bird as it cooks.

The step that matters

Roast the fowl slowly before a bright clear fire, basting occasionally. Slow roasting lets heat reach the centre of the bird before the outside over-browns. Regular basting moistens the surface and spreads fat and juices, helping keep the meat tender and evenly coloured.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, watercress):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, watercress. 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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