Name: Fricassee of Chickens, with Mushrooms, Etc.
Ingredients: 2 fat plump chickens; 1 carrot, thinly sliced; 1 onion, thinly sliced; a little celery, thinly sliced; 3 cloves; 12 peppercorns; 1 blade of mace; a faggot of parsley; 1 quart boiling broth

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chickens, with Mushrooms, Etc.

Ingredients

Directions

Singe the chickens over a charcoal flame and cut them into joints.
Remove the wings and legs, then make parallel cuts on the back to mark where to cut.
Place the chicken on its side and cut the leg and fillet, then repeat on the other side.
Remove the thigh bones, separate the back and breast, and cut the back into two pieces.
Soak the chicken pieces in tepid water for 10 minutes, squeezing to extract blood.
In a stewpan, layer the sliced carrot, onion, celery, cloves, peppercorns, mace, and parsley.
Arrange the chicken pieces neatly on top and moisten with boiling broth.

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.

Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,873 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 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

Swap the mace

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

Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Cuminfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, onion, celery, clove, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.