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Baked Chicken

A whole chicken baked with butter, salt, and flour, basted with butter and boiling water until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Baked Chicken

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Dress, clean, stuff, and truss the chicken.

  2. Place the chicken on its back in a baking pan.

  3. Rub the entire surface with coarse sea salt and spread 2 tablespoons of butter on the breast and legs.

  4. Dredge the bottom of the pan with flour.

Roast and baste

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the flour is well browned.

  2. Reduce the heat and baste every 10 minutes until the chicken is cooked.

  3. For basting, mix 1 tablespoon of melted butter with ⅔ cup of boiling water, then use the fat in the pan.

  4. Turn the chicken frequently to brown evenly.

  5. Bake for about 1 to 1½ hours until the breast meat is tender.

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 + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks through.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches flavour and helps the skin brown in the oven.
Flour
Browns in the pan drippings, adding colour and a toasted aroma to the pan fat used for basting.

The step that matters

Basting with the pan fat. Basting spreads fat over the skin and keeps the surface from drying, helping it brown evenly. Baste at the set interval so the skin does not dry out before the meat is cooked.

“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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