Name: Chicken a LA Creole
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons chopped onions; 4 tablespoons chopped green peppers; 3 tablespoons butter; ½ cup flour; 2 cups chicken stock; 1 cup tomatoes; 2 cups cooked chicken, chopped; salt to taste; pepper to taste

Why it works: Chicken and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,027 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the sauce

Cook the onions and green peppers in butter for five minutes.
Add flour, chicken stock, and tomatoes; heat until hot.

Finish and serve

Stir in the chopped cooked chicken and season with salt and pepper.
Serve plain or on toast.

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 + tomatotop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together6,027 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Onion + chickentop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together17,808 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Pepper + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together17,913 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together20,622 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + flourtop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together122,858 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour: Thickens the stock and tomato mixture into a smooth sauce.
Butter: Cooks the vegetables gently and adds richness to the sauce.
Chicken stock: Provides the liquid base that carries the sauce's savoury flavour.
Tomatoes: Add acidity and body, giving the sauce its characteristic flavour.
Chopped green peppers: Add a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable aroma as they soften in butter.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

Capsicumbetter flavor fit
Potatobetter flavor fit
Carrotabout as good a flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, chicken, tomato. 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).

“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.