Name: Fowl, Stewed with Mushrooms
Ingredients: 1 large white fowl; strong gravy or mutton broth; white pepper; 1 onion; mace; butter; flour; button mushrooms

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Fowl, Stewed with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the fowl in strong gravy or mutton broth.
Season with white pepper, onion, and mace.
Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour.
Add button mushrooms to the stew.
Serve with mushroom sauce or place a fricassee of mushrooms around the fowl.

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.

Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,695 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,626 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mutton + mushroomtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together685 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, mace, butter, flour, mushroom):

Thymefits better
Nutmegfits better
Garlicfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, mace, butter, flour, mushroom. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.