Name: Minced Chicken, with Macaroni
Ingredients: chicken or fowl; Bechamel sauce; macaroni; grated Parmesan cheese; white sauce

Why it works: Chicken and parmesan cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,846 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Minced Chicken, with Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken or fowl in small, thin pieces.
Add Bechamel sauce to the chicken.
Cook the macaroni and dress it with grated Parmesan cheese and a spoonful of Bechamel sauce.
Arrange the macaroni in a border around the bottom of a dish.
Place the minced chicken in the center, piled up like a cone.
Pour a little white sauce around the dish and serve.

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 + parmesan cheesetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,846 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Sauce + parmesan cheesetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,294 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).
Chicken + saucetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,513 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).