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Roast Chicken

Roast Chicken is a whole chicken roasted with butter, salt, pepper, and flour, served with a gravy made from giblets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Roast Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash the chicken thoroughly in two or three waters.

  2. Add a little baking soda to the second-to-last rinse to sweeten it if needed.

  3. Dry the chicken with a clean cloth.

  4. Fill the cavity with stuffing.

  5. Place the chicken in a roasting pan.

Roast

  1. Add hot water and butter.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Baste frequently.

  4. Roast at 400°F (200°C) without scorching.

  5. Add a piece of butter the size of a large egg to the pan. Once melted, baste again.

  6. Dredge with flour.

  7. Let it finish roasting. Roast for about 30 minutes if the fire is right.

Make the gravy

  1. Simmer the giblets in a little water, then strain.

  2. Mix with the drippings from the chicken.

  3. Skim off excess fat.

  4. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  5. Add chopped giblets.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken with the gravy in a boat.

  2. Accompany with cranberry sauce or any tart 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. 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 + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Chicken + livertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together383 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 helps the skin brown as it melts and bastes the bird.
Flour
Thickens the gravy and adds browning when cooked in the pan drippings.
Giblets
Simmered to build a savory, meaty flavor in the gravy.
Hot water
Creates liquid in the pan that mixes with the drippings to form the gravy base.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with browned flour. Flour must cook in the fat and drippings until nutty and fully mixed, or the gravy tastes raw and turns lumpy. Stir constantly so it does not scorch.

“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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