Name: Fowl, with Peas
Ingredients: 2 ounces butter; flour (for coating); chopped parsley (to taste); pepper (to taste); coarse sea salt (to taste); pounded mace (to taste); ½ pint broth or gravy; 1 pint peas; 1 teaspoon sugar

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 ↓

Fowl, with Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

Fry the remains of a cold roast fowl in butter until browned.
On a plate, mix flour, chopped parsley, pepper, salt, and pounded mace.
Coat each piece of fowl in the mixture as it comes from the frying pan.

Cook with the peas

In a stewpan, combine broth or gravy, peas, and sugar.
Add the fowl to the stew.
Cook until the peas are tender.

Serve

Serve the peas in the center of the dish.
Arrange the fowl pieces in a circle around them.

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).
Butter + flourtop 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).
Parsley + peastop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,885 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,268 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Butter and flour 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

Butter: Browns the fowl pieces and adds richness to the coating.
Flour: Forms a light coating that helps the fowl brown and thickens the sauce slightly.
Peas: Provide the main vegetable, becoming tender as they simmer in the broth.
Broth or gravy: Forms the moist cooking liquid that softens the peas and carries flavour.
Sugar: Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the savoury broth and peas.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, parsley, pepper, peas, sugar):

Tarragonfits better
Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Macethe original

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

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.