Why it works: Pepper and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Boiled Fowl with Macaroni
Ingredients
Directions
Break the macaroni into 2-inch pieces.
Add macaroni to boiling water with salt and pepper.
Boil for 1½ minutes, then drain the water.
Mix in butter and additional salt.
Stuff the cleaned fowl with the macaroni.
Truss the fowl and wrap it in a floured cloth.
Plunge the wrapped fowl into boiling water to cover.
Boil rapidly for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to simmer.
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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Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
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