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A roasted chicken served with broth, turnips, peas, rhubarb, nuts, olives, and coffee with cream and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and rhubarb share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the broth and set it aside.

  2. Peel and chop the turnips, then cook them until tender.

  3. Steam the green peas until bright green and tender.

  4. Wash and chop the fresh rhubarb.

  5. Brew coffee and serve with cream and butter.

Cook and serve

  1. Roast the chicken until fully cooked.

  2. Serve the chicken with broth, turnips, peas, rhubarb, nuts, and olives.

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.

  1. Turnip + rhubarbtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Peas + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-hex-3-en-1-ol (freshly cut grass green and herbaceous notes).

  3. Turnip + peastop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  5. Nuts + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken
Provides the main protein, which sets firm as it cooks through.
Turnips
Soften when cooked, adding a mild, slightly sweet body to the dish.
Green peas
Add sweetness and tender texture; steaming keeps their bright green color.
Fresh rhubarb
Adds tartness that balances the rich chicken and butter.
Ripe olives
Add salty, briny flavor that contrasts with the sweet and sour elements.
Butter
Adds fat, richness and smooth mouthfeel to the coffee and cream.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, turnip, peas, rhubarb, olive, coffee, cream):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, turnip, peas, rhubarb, olive, coffee, cream. 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.

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