Name: Roast Goose with Puree of Chestnuts
Ingredients: 1 goose; 20 large chestnuts; ½ pint milk; butter; 1 pinch powdered sugar; ¼ cup cream; pepper; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Roast Goose with Puree of Chestnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the outer skin from the chestnuts and scald them.
Carefully scrape off the inner skin.
Put the chestnuts in a saucepan with milk and boil gently until soft.
Drain the milk and rub the chestnuts through a sieve.
In a stewpan, combine the chestnut pulp with butter, powdered sugar, cream, pepper, and salt.
Stir over low heat until hot (do not boil) and serve with the roasted goose.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Chestnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together826 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Chestnut + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together647 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, cream, pepper):

Almondfits better
Walnutfits about as well
Chestnutthe original
Pistachiofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, cream, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.