Name: Chicken with Rice
Ingredients: 1 chicken; coarse sea salt; ground ginger; ½ pound rice; water

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 with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

Joint the chicken and season it with coarse sea salt and ground ginger.

Cook

Boil the chicken in a deep porcelain-lined dish with enough water to just cover it.
Once the chicken is tender, add the rice and boil until cooked.

Serve

Serve the chicken and rice together on a large platter.

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).
Ginger + ricetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,196 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Chicken + gingertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,494 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken: Provides the main protein; simmering in water until tender makes it soft and moist.
Rice: Absorbs cooking liquid as it boils, becoming soft and bulking out the dish.