Name: Molding in Aspic Jelly
Ingredients: aspic jelly; yolks of eggs; fillets of chicken breast; truffle; hard-cooked white of egg; capers; green peas; slices of olives

Why it works: Capers and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,688 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Molding in Aspic Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Chill the mold in crushed ice and water.
Pour a few spoonfuls of liquid aspic into the mold and rotate to coat the sides.
Use a larding needle to place decorations like truffle and egg on the bottom of the mold, securing with a drop of aspic.
Dip garnish bits in aspic and adhere them to the chilled sides of the mold.
Finish filling the mold with aspic according to your specific dish instructions.

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.

Capers + olivetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Peas + olivetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,066 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-hex-3-en-1-ol (freshly cut grass green and herbaceous notes).
Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,888 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).
Chicken + truffletop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together756 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Chicken + peastop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,528 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, chicken, truffle, peas, olive):

Garlicfits about as well
Thymefits about as well
Tarragonfits about as well
Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, chicken, truffle, peas, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.