Name: Chickens, a LA Keine
Ingredients: 2 small spring chickens; lemon juice; thickly buttered paper; parsley; 1 carrot; 1 onion; 2 cloves; boiling stock

Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 17,808 recipes mention both. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Truss the chickens and rub them with lemon juice.
Wrap each chicken in a sheet of buttered paper.
Place the chickens in a stewpan with parsley, carrot, onion, and cloves.
Moisten with boiling stock to nearly cover the chickens.
Boil gently for about 40 minutes until done.
Drain the chickens on a napkin, remove the paper and string.
Dish the chickens side by side and cover with Supreme sauce.
Garnish with small quenelles of fowl and serve.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Chicken + oniontop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together17,808 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together14,036 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Carrot + clovetop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together4,916 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Carrot + oniontop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together21,599 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

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, lemon, parsley, carrot, onion):

Celerybetter flavor fit
Thymebetter flavor fit
Marjorambetter flavor fit
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, lemon, parsley, carrot, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).