Name: Fricassee of Fowls
Ingredients: 2 whole fat chickens; butter; coarse sea salt; buttered paper; crawfish; truffles

Why it works: Butter and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,209 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Fricassee of Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chickens as described, setting aside the wings.
Remove the skin from the wings and uncover the ends of the bones.
If available, garnish two wings with fresh truffle.
Melt butter in a tart pan, add the wings, sprinkle with salt, cover with buttered paper, and place in the oven.
Prepare the fricassee as previously instructed, then plate and sauce it.
Arrange the wings in a cross shape on top, glazing them, and place a crawfish and a truffle on each wing.

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.

Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,209 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Chicken + truffletop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together756 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).