Name: Fowls a LA Mayonnaise
Ingredients: 2 cold roast fowls; Hearts of young lettuces, cut in half; 2 hard-boiled eggs, halved lengthwise; Mayonnaise sauce (or salad mixture with thick cream)

Why it works: Lettuce and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,019 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fowls a LA Mayonnaise

Ingredients

2 cold roast fowls
Hearts of young lettuces, cut in half
2 hard-boiled eggs, halved lengthwise
Mayonnaise sauce (or salad mixture with thick cream)

Directions

Prepare

Carve the cold roast fowls neatly.

Arrange the dish

Place the inferior joints in the center of a dish.
Arrange the other pieces around and over the inferior joints, piling them high in the center.
Border the dish with the halved lettuce hearts and hard-boiled egg halves.

Serve

At serving time, pour the mayonnaise sauce over the fowls, or use a salad mixture with thick cream instead of oil.

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.

Lettuce + saucetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,019 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Lettuce + eggtop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,301 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Egg + saucetop 39% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,895 recipes

Egg and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 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

Cold roast fowls: Provide the main meat, served cold and carved into neat pieces.
Mayonnaise sauce: Adds richness and moisture, coating the fowl with a creamy, fatty dressing.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add richness and a firm, cooked texture as a decorative border.