Name: Cream Barley, Marie Louise Style
Ingredients: 2 raw chickens; broth (from previous recipe); salt to taste; pepper to taste; 6 ounces butter; 1 pint cream; 6 egg yolks; a pinch of sugar; green peas (for garnish)

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream Barley, Marie Louise Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup as in the previous recipe.
Add the chickens to the boiling broth and cook slowly until done.
Remove the chickens and any herbs, skim off the grease, and strain the broth.
Season the broth with salt and pepper, then keep warm over low heat.
Pound the chicken breasts with the butter until smooth, then strain through a fine sieve.
In a saucepan, combine the strained chicken mixture with cream, egg yolks, and sugar.
Gradually add the hot broth while whisking briskly.
Serve garnished with green peas.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Chicken + peastop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,528 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,331 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

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

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, butter, cream, egg, sugar):

Almondfits better
Walnutfits about as well
Peanutfits about as well
Peasthe original

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