Name: Minced Chicken with Green Peppers
Ingredients: 2 green peppers; 2 cups cooked chicken, chopped; 3½ tablespoons butter; 3 tablespoons flour; 1⅓ cups chicken stock; coarse sea salt, to taste; black pepper, to taste

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Minced Chicken with Green Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

Boil the green peppers for 10 minutes.
Remove the seeds and cut the peppers into thin strips using scissors.

Make the sauce

Melt the butter in a pan, then add the flour and stir until well blended.
Gradually pour in the chicken stock while stirring constantly.
Bring the mixture to a boil, then season with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

Add the peppers and chicken, and serve as soon as thoroughly heated.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Pepper + chickentop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,958 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Enriches the sauce with fat and flavour, and helps form the roux base.
Flour: Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Chicken stock: Provides the liquid that becomes the sauce, adding savoury flavour.
Green peppers: Add a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavour and texture to the dish.
Cooked chicken: Supplies the main protein, warmed through in the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the stock into the roux. Adding the stock gradually while stirring constantly keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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.

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Minced Chicken with Green Peppers