Name: Chicken Chartreuse
Ingredients: 1 cup cooked chicken, minced very fine; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; ½ teaspoon onion juice; ¼ teaspoon salt; 2 tablespoons tomato juice; 1 beaten egg; dash of pepper

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 Chartreuse

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Mix the minced chicken, parsley, onion juice, salt, tomato juice, beaten egg, and pepper in a bowl until well combined.
Grease a Charlotte russe mold thoroughly.

Set and serve

Fill the mold with the chicken mixture.
Chill until set before serving.

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).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,398 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,031 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken: Forms the bulk of the mousse and provides its savoury flavour.
Beaten egg: Binds the mixture and helps it set firm when chilled.
Tomato juice: Adds moisture and a gentle acidity to the mixture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, parsley, tomato, egg, pepper):

Capsicumfits better
Carrotfits better
Potatofits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, parsley, tomato, egg, pepper. 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.