Name: Chicken Hash on Rice Toast
Ingredients: cooked chicken; water; coarse sea salt; white pepper; rice; butter; orange juice; eggs

Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Chicken Hash on Rice Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Trim the meat from the bones, remove the skin, and cut the chicken into small pieces.
In a pan, add a little water to moisten the chicken, then season with salt and white pepper.
Cook until the water evaporates, then arrange the chicken on rice toast.
Prepare the rice the night before by boiling it, then pressing it into a dish and refrigerating it with a weight.
The next morning, cut the rice into half-inch slices, brush with butter, and toast until golden brown.
Pour melted butter over the toasted rice, season with salt and pepper, and add orange juice.
If desired, top with a poached egg.

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 + ricetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,769 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,067 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, rice, butter, orange, egg):

Cinnamonfits better
Thymefits better
Nutmegfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, rice, butter, orange, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.