Name: Chicken Boneless
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken; salt and pepper to taste; butter (if needed)

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 Boneless

Ingredients

1 whole chicken
salt and pepper to taste
butter (if needed)

Directions

Cook the chicken

Fricassee the chicken, browning the skin nicely.
Season to taste.
Once cooked, let it cool.

Shape and serve

Remove all the bones and chop the chicken finely.
Mix in the oil from the chicken; add butter if needed.
Pack the mixture closely in a dish.
Turn out when ready to serve.

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).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken: Forms the main body of the dish once boned and chopped.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture to the chopped chicken if the oil is not enough.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.