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To Roast Black Cock and Gray Hen

A roasted black cock or gray hen, basted with butter and served with brown gravy and bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Roast Black Cock and Gray Hen

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hang the bird until it shows signs of being ready to roast.

  2. Carefully pluck and draw the bird, avoiding breaking the skin.

  3. Truss the bird like a pheasant.

Roast

  1. Place it at a moderate distance from a clear, brisk fire.

  2. Baste constantly with butter while roasting.

  3. For the last 10 minutes, place thick toast in the dripping pan under the bird to soak up the juices.

  4. Optionally, squeeze a little lemon juice over the toast before placing it in the pan.

  5. Roast for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with brown gravy and bread 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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Black cock or gray hen
Is the meat that is roasted, giving the dish its main flavour and texture.
Butter
Basting fat that browns the skin and keeps the surface moist as it roasts.
Thick toast
Soaks up the dripping juices, becoming a moist, flavourful base for serving.

The step that matters

Baste constantly with butter while roasting. Game birds are lean and dry out easily. Frequent basting spreads fat over the skin, helping it brown and keeping the meat moist during the roast.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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