Name: Quenelles of Fowl
Ingredients: 3 large fowls; 1 medium onion; 5-6 sprigs of thyme; 5-6 sprigs of parsley; 1 small carrot

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Quenelles of Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowls by removing the skin and fillets from the carcasses.
Cut off the legs and remove as much flesh as possible, setting the carcasses aside.
Scrape the flesh from the fillets and place it on a clean plate.
Do the same with the flesh from the legs, removing sinews as you go.
Chop the chicken bones, neck, and giblets, and place them in a stew pan with the pinions, onion, thyme, parsley, and carrot.

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.

Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,563 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,171 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).