Name: Chicken Chartreuse
Ingredients: finely chopped cooked chicken (or any meat); cream or poulette sauce; left-over sauce from the meats; butter; hot cooked rice; tomato sauce

Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Chicken Chartreuse

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Mix the finely chopped cooked chicken with cream or poulette sauce.
Line a well-buttered mold with hot cooked rice, about 1 inch thick.
Fill the center with the meat mixture and cover the top with rice.
Cover the mold and cook in a water bath at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes.
Serve surrounded by tomato sauce.

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.

Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,769 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,065 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,031 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, cream, sauce, meat, butter, rice):

Potatofits better
Onionfits about as well
Asparagusfits about as well
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, sauce, meat, butter, rice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.