There’s nothing subtle about the sign outside the Mayflower Poultry Company in East Cambridge: “Live Poultry, Fresh Killed,” it proclaims across the silhouette of a sunny yellow (and presumably doomed) chicken. We picked up a whole chicken at Mayflower’s butcher shop to see if a freshly killed chicken is better than our usual supermarket bird.

The shop is simple and unassuming, with most of the space devoted to chicken, although they do also sell a variety of meats (goat, lamb, and game hens, to name just a few)… not to mention a good amount of “Live Poultry, Fresh Killed” merch, including T-shirts and thongs. Yes, thongs. There's a good holiday gift idea for you.

The counter staff was quick and friendly, and offered to cut up our bird for us. We declined, since we wanted to roast our chicken whole. The only visible difference between our uncooked, antibiotic-free, $5.51 Mayflower chicken and our usual was that its butt still had the ends of a few feathers in it. Nothing to squawk about, though; it took us less than a minute with some tweezers to clean up that juicy morsel.

To roast our chicken, we used a reliable, dead-easy technique that Napa-based chef Thomas Keller (chef and owner of the French Laundry) describes in his cookbook Bouchon. Rinse and dry the bird, inside and out, and salt and pepper its cavity. Tie its legs together with twine (this makes the chicken cook more evenly), pour a heaping tablespoon of kosher salt on top, and season with pepper. Cook the chicken at 450°F in a roasting pan for about 50 minutes (for a 3 1/2-pound chicken; longer for a bigger bird) or until it’s done.

Take it out of the oven, baste it with drippings from the pan, and top with two teaspoons of minced fresh thyme leaves. (We think the thyme is worth the extra effort, but you can certainly do without.) Let the chicken sit for 15 minutes before serving.

We’ve never been dissatisfied with our regular supermarket chickens, but we thought that our Mayflower chicken was a little juicier and more tender than what we’ve made before. It may have also been the trip to an actual butcher shop that made us that more excited than usual about a simple roast chicken. Or the sense of history associated with the Mayflower. We’ll stop by Mayflower again… we had our eye on their “super jumbo” eggs, not to mention the “Live Poultry, Fresh Killed” apron.

Post and photo contributed by Lisa Scanlon.