Name: Chicken Pie
Ingredients: 3 lbs chicken; ½ lb flour; 2 oz salt pork; 5 oz butter; 1 onion, chopped; 2 teaspoons parsley, chopped; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon pepper; boiling water

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Pluck the chicken, singe off hairs, and wipe it with a damp cloth. Carefully draw the chicken without breaking the entrails.
Cut the chicken into joints and place in a hot frying pan with 1 oz of butter and diced salt pork. Fry until browned.
Stir in 1 oz of flour and let it brown. Season with salt, pepper, and parsley. Cover with boiling water and simmer for 1 hour until tender.
For the pastry, mix ½ lb of flour with 1 teaspoon of salt and 4 oz of butter. Use cold water to form a stiff paste.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,417 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,814 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,214 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 (chicken, flour, pork, butter, onion, pepper):

Garlicfits better
Thymefits better
Parsleythe original
Marjoramfits about as well

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