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Roast Chicken

Roast chicken seasoned with salt and pepper, stuffed with bread crumbs, baked, served with a gravy made from giblets and crabapple jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,258 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity. 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 chickens in water twice and dry them.

  2. Season the inside with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Stuff the chickens with a dressing of bread crumbs or crushed crackers.

Roast and make the gravy

  1. Bake the chickens at 400°F (200°C) for 1–2 hours, basting frequently until tender.

  2. Stew the giblets in a kettle until well done.

  3. Chop the giblets finely and add them to the gravy after removing the chicken.

  4. Thicken the gravy with a little flour and water, let it boil, and serve in a gravy dish.

Serve

  1. Serve with crabapple jelly.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  2. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Bread and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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

Chickens
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender and juicy as it roasts.
Bread crumbs or crushed crackers
Form a dressing that absorbs juices and adds soft, savory bulk inside the bird.
Flour
Thickens the pan liquids into a smooth gravy as it boils with the water.
Giblets
Simmered and chopped, they add concentrated meaty flavor to the gravy.
Crabapple jelly
Adds sweet-tart acidity that contrasts with the rich roasted meat.

The step that matters

Basting the chickens during roasting. Frequent basting moistens the surface and helps the skin brown and stay tender, while the juices collected in the pan become the base for the gravy.

“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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