Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓
Sauce to Broiled Fowl
Ingredients
Directions
Fry sliced onions in butter until soft.
Add a little flour and moisten with the boiling liquid from the fowl, stirring until smooth.
Remove the onions and season the sauce with pepper, coarse sea salt, and grated nutmeg.
Add the fowl's comb, wattles, kidneys, liver (cut in two), gizzard (cut into four), brains, pickled mushrooms, and vinegar to the sauce.
Keep the sauce hot in a bain-marie until ready to serve.
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.
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Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,525 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together13,015 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,623 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together10,626 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together68,474 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the nutmeg
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, flour, pepper, liver, mushroom, vinegar):
- Thymefits better
- Garlicfits better
- Parsleyfits better
- Nutmegthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, pepper, liver, mushroom, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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