Roast Chicken

Chicken seasoned with flour, butter, salt and pepper basted in its drippings while baking.

Take a chicken, clean, singe, and remove the pin feathers; then wipe it clean, stuff and truss it. Rub it over with a mixture of salt, pepper, and flour, and warmed butter, and put it into a bakingpan with a little chicken fat or dripping, and set it in the oven. When the flour is well browned, reduce the heat of the oven, baste well with its fat, and afterward with three or four ounces of butter melted in a breakfast cupful of boiling water. When the chicken is brown on one side, turn it over on the other, so as to color it well all over, adding a little more water if there should not be sufficient to baste with. A bird weighing from four and a half to five pounds will take about an hour and a half to bake.