Name: Fowl Panada
Ingredients: meat of a boiled fowl; water from boiling the fowl; lemon juice; coarse sea salt; nutmeg or other spice

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fowl Panada

Ingredients

Directions

Pound the meat of a boiled fowl in a mortar until it forms a fine paste.
Add a little of the water in which the fowl was boiled.
Flavor with lemon juice, coarse sea salt, and nutmeg or other spice.
Boil the mixture for a few minutes.

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.

Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Meat + nutmegtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,656 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Meat + lemontop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,817 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat of a boiled fowl: Forms the main body of the pâté, giving it its paste-like structure when pounded fine.
Water from boiling the fowl: Adds moisture and savory flavor, loosening the paste so it spreads smoothly.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savory flavor of the meat.