Name: Chicken Pot Roast
Ingredients: young chicken; butter; coarse sea salt; black pepper

Why it works: Chicken and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,902 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Chicken Pot Roast

Ingredients

young chicken
butter
coarse sea salt
black pepper

Directions

Heat butter in a flat-bottomed iron kettle.
Add a layer of chicken and season with salt and pepper.
Fry until brown, then turn and fry the other side.
Remove the chicken to a dish and repeat with the remaining chicken.
Once all the chicken is browned, return it to the kettle.
Cover airtight and let it simmer slowly on the stove without adding water.
After about an hour, remove the chicken and make gravy in the kettle.

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.

Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,958 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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