Name: Chicken Stew
Ingredients: 1 chicken; hot water; salt; potatoes; flour; butter; pepper; cooked peas (optional)

Why it works: Chicken and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,756 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-decenal, which smells green, must. The science ↓

Chicken Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Cut up the chicken and cover it with hot water.
Stew until the chicken is tender, about 1 hour.
Add salt to the stew.
Peel and slice or cube the potatoes and add them to the stew.
When the potatoes are partly cooked, thicken the stew with flour mixed in cold water until it reaches a thin gravy consistency.
Season with butter, pepper, and more salt if necessary.
Add the dumplings and cooked peas 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.

Chicken + potatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,756 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).
Potato + peastop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,016 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, potato, flour, butter, pepper):

Beansfits better
Cashew nutfits better
Chickpeafits better
Peasthe original

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