Name: Roast Birds
Ingredients: birds (your choice); coarse sea salt; pepper; thin slice of salt pork; melted butter; sweet potatoes; cranberries or currant jelly; bread sauce

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roast Birds

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the birds for baking.
Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Skewer the birds on a thin slice of salt pork.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 to 20 minutes, basting often with melted butter.
Brown sweet potatoes in the same pan with the birds.
Serve with cranberries or currant jelly and bread sauce.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + sweet potatotop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,371 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,933 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, pork, butter, sweet potato, bread, sauce):

Avocadofits better
Coconutfits better
Limefits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, pork, butter, sweet potato, bread, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.