Name: Chicken Croquette
Ingredients: white and dark meat of a roasted or boiled chicken; pepper; coarse sea salt; gravy from the chicken; 1 egg; cracker crumbs; butter for frying; parsley for garnish

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Croquette

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the chicken meat finely and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Moisten the mixture with a little of its own gravy and form it into oval balls.
Dip each ball into a beaten egg, then roll in cracker crumbs.
Fry the croquettes in boiling hot butter until golden brown.
Serve on a hot platter and garnish with sprigs of parsley.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,449 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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).

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, chicken, egg, butter):

Parsleythe original
Thymefits about as well
Tarragonfits less well
Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, chicken, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.