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Baked Chicken

A whole chicken baked with butter, flour, and seasonings, served with a sauce made from its giblets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

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 the chicken

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Stuff the chicken body and sew up the vent.

  3. Cross and tie the legs together, then secure them with a skewer through the legs and body.

  4. Rub the chicken all over with softened butter and dredge with flour.

Roast and make the gravy

  1. Place some water in the baking pan and baste the chicken often with flour.

  2. Boil the giblets, wing tips, and neck; chop the meat finely.

  3. Pour the boiling water from the giblets into the baking pan, add the chopped meat, and thicken with flour mixed with water.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Whole chicken
Forms the main protein that cooks through in the oven and yields the meat.
Softened butter
Adds fat that enriches flavor and helps the skin brown and stay moist.
Flour
Coats the skin to aid browning and thickens the pan liquid into gravy.
Giblets, wing tips, and neck
Simmered to make a flavorful broth and chopped meat for the gravy.

The step that matters

Basting the chicken with flour. Flour on the skin can burn or clump if the pan has too little liquid, so keep water in the pan and baste often to promote even browning.

“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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