Name: Of Stewing
Ingredients: 2 chickens, cut into quarters; ½ cup water; mace, to taste; pepper, to taste; a bundle of sweet herbs; 1 onion; a few breadcrumbs; 1 egg-sized piece of butter, rolled in flour; sliced lemon, for garnish

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Of Stewing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

Wash the chicken quarters and place them in a saucepan.
Add water, mace, pepper, sweet herbs, onion, and breadcrumbs.
Cover and stew for 30 minutes.
Add the butter.
Cover and stew for 5-6 minutes.
Shake the saucepan.

Finish and serve

Remove the sweet herbs and onion.
Transfer to a dish and garnish with sliced lemon.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,814 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they 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

Chicken: Provides the main protein, which becomes tender as it stews slowly in liquid.
Butter: Rolled in flour, it thickens the cooking liquid and adds richness to the sauce.
Breadcrumbs: Help thicken the stewing liquid and give the sauce body.

Swap the mace

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

Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Tarragonfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, onion, egg, butter, flour, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.