Name: Boiled Chickens
Ingredients: 2 whole chickens; salt (to taste); water (enough to cover the chickens); optional: stuffing (if desired); optional: pork (for boiling with the chickens)

Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Boiled Chickens

Ingredients

2 whole chickens
salt (to taste)
water (enough to cover the chickens)
optional: stuffing (if desired)
optional: pork (for boiling with the chickens)

Directions

Prepare

Dress the chickens and remove any unwanted parts.
Place the chickens in a large pot and cover with water.
Add salt to taste.
If desired, add stuffing inside the chickens.
For added flavor, you can include pork in the pot.

Boil

Bring the water to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.
Boil the chickens for 1 to 2 hours, depending on their size and age.

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.

Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,417 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens: Provide the main protein, which becomes tender as the meat cooks slowly in simmering water.
Pork: Optional addition that adds savory flavor to the cooking water as it simmers.

“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.