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Baked Chicken

A whole chicken baked with a crumb and butter dressing, seasoned with salt and pepper, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Baked 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 and salt it inside and out.

  2. Make a dressing with the rolled crackers or bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and butter.

  3. Fill the chicken with the dressing to make it look plump.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the chicken in a pan with water, salt, pepper, and the slices of middling.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 hours.

  3. Remove the chicken and add a little flour to the gravy, boiling it for a moment 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. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the dish, cooking as the centre of the meal.
Rolled crackers or bread crumbs
Bulk the dressing and soak up juices, keeping the stuffing moist and tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the dressing and chicken brown as they bake.
Slices of middling
Release fat and flavour into the pan, adding savouriness to the gravy and chicken.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the pan juices into a gravy as it comes to a boil.

The step that matters

Boiling the gravy after adding flour. Flour must be boiled briefly to swell its starch and thicken the liquid; without it the gravy stays thin and can taste raw.

“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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