Name: Pheasant, Stewed with Artichokes
Ingredients: veal broth; parboiled artichoke bottoms; 1 bit of mace; ⅓ cup white wine; pepper; coarse sea salt; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; butter; flour

Why it works: Artichoke and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 636 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Pheasant, Stewed with Artichokes

Ingredients

Directions

Heat enough veal broth to cover the pheasant.
Add parboiled artichoke bottoms, mace, white wine, pepper, coarse sea salt, lemon juice, butter, and flour.
Put in the pieces of pheasant and let them stew gently until warmed.
Place the pheasant in the center of a dish and pour the hot sauce over it.
Garnish with forcemeat balls around the dish.

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.

Artichoke + lemontop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together636 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Artichoke + flourtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together466 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,083 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Artichoke + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,170 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 (veal, artichoke, white wine, pepper, lemon, butter, flour):

Parsleyfits better
Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, artichoke, white wine, pepper, lemon, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.