Name: Chicken Terrapin
Ingredients: 2 cups boiled chicken, diced; 2 stalks celery, finely chopped; ½ small onion, finely chopped; 2½ cups rich milk; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 tablespoon flour; ½ teaspoon salt; ½ teaspoon pepper; 1 scant teaspoon lemon juice

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter in a saucepan and brown it.
Sift in the flour and mix well.
Place the mixture over boiling water and add the celery and onion; cook for several minutes.
Add the chicken, salt, and pepper; stir to combine.
Just before removing from heat, add the egg and lemon juice.
If the mixture is too thick, thin it with chicken gravy.
Serve on toast or in patties.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,467 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, celery, milk, butter, flour, pepper, lemon):

Potatofits better
Capsicumfits better
Leekfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, milk, butter, flour, pepper, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.