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Baked Prairie Chicken

A whole chicken stuffed with bread, butter, pepper, salt, summer savory, and wrapped in bacon, baked until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and summer savory work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 671 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Prairie Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Stuff and wrap

  1. Stuff the chicken with the prepared dressing made from bread, butter, pepper, salt, and summer savory.

  2. Wrap the outside of the chicken with thin slices of sweet bacon.

Bake and serve

  1. Baste the chicken often while cooking.

  2. Remove the bacon before serving.

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. Pepper + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + summer savorytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the dressing that fills the bird and absorbs the butter and juices.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the dressing and chicken moist as it bakes.
Sweet bacon
Wrapped around the outside, it bastes the bird in its fat and adds savory flavor.
Summer savory
Contributes a peppery, herbal aroma to the dressing.

The step that matters

Baste the chicken often while cooking. Basting spreads fat and juices over the skin, helping it brown and stay moist. Infrequent basting can leave the surface dry while the interior is still cooking.

Swap the summer savory

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, bread, butter, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Summer savorythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, butter, pepper. 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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