Name: Chicken Florentine Pasta
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 20 min
Yield: 10
Ingredients: 1 pound Penne; 4 whole Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts; Salt And Pepper, to taste; 2 Tablespoons Butter; 2 Tablespoons Olive Oil; 4 cloves Garlic, Minced; 3/4 cups Dry White Wine; 3/4 cups Low-sodium Broth, More If Needed; 1 bag Baby Spinach; 2 cups Grape Tomatoes, Halved Lengthwise; 4 ounces, weight Parmesan Cheese, Shaved With Vegetable Peeler

Why it works: Garlic and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,435 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

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.

Garlic + spinachtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,435 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,665 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Olive + spinachtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,400 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, butter, olive, garlic, white wine, spinach):

Thymebetter flavor fit
Parsleybetter flavor fit
Rosemarybetter flavor fit
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, butter, olive, garlic, white wine, spinach. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

Chicken Florentine Pasta