Why it works: Chicken and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,936 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓
Roasted Chicken, with Variations
Ingredients
Directions
Remove every pin feather from the chicken.
Singe the chicken thoroughly.
Clean the inside with cheese-cloth wrung from cold water.
Reject the tips of the wings.
Cut the neck bone off close to the body.
Draw the skin over the end and skewer it to the back.
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.
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Chicken + cheesetop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,936 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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