Name: Chicken Oulash
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken; ½ can of tomatoes or 6 whole tomatoes; 6 onions, chopped; salt to taste; pepper to taste; a pinch of sugar; 2 tablespoons of butter; 12 slices of buttered toast

Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chicken Oulash

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

Boil the chicken until tender, then remove it from the pot.
Take out the bones and return them to the broth; cook for 30 minutes.
Remove the bones again and cut the chicken into small pieces, reserving the liver, heart, and gizzard for another use.
Add the chicken back into the broth along with tomatoes, onions, salt, pepper, sugar, and butter.
Stew until fully cooked.

Serve

Pour the mixture over the buttered toast in a soup tureen and serve hot.

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.

Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,031 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,814 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken: Provides the main body of the stew and rich flavour from the broth it cooks in.
Tomatoes: Add acidity and a tangy base that balances the richness of the broth.
Onions: Add sweetness and aroma as they soften into the stew.
Butter: Adds fat and a rounded, rich flavour to the finished stew.

Swap the onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits better
Okrafits about as well
Onionthe original

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

“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.