Name: Boiled Fowl
Ingredients: 1 young fowl; ½ cup oysters; 1 egg (optional); ½ cup cream (optional); 2 tablespoons flour (optional); 2 tablespoons butter (optional); Coarse sea salt (to taste); Fresh parsley (for garnish, optional)

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fowl

Fill the inside of the young fowl with oysters.
Place the fowl in a jar and submerge it in a kettle of water.
Boil for 1.5 hours.
Remove the fowl and reserve the gravy from the jar.

Make the sauce and serve

To make a white sauce, combine the reserved gravy with egg, cream, or a mixture of flour and butter.
Add oysters to the sauce or serve the fowl plain.
Garnish with fresh parsley if desired.

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.

Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,103 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Young fowl: Provides the main protein, which cooks gently while submerged in water.
Oysters: Add a briny, savory flavor to the fowl and the optional sauce.
Egg: Thickens the white sauce when combined with the reserved gravy.
Cream: Adds richness and body to the white sauce.
Flour: Thickens the white sauce together with butter.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the flour-thickened white sauce.