Name: Chicken Legs
Ingredients: short pieces of ham; salad oil or oiled butter; chicken legs; croutons; mushrooms

Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chicken Legs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Fry the short pieces of ham until cooked.
Brush the chicken legs with salad oil or oiled butter.

Grill and serve

Grill the chicken legs over a clear fire for about 15 minutes.
Arrange the grilled chicken on croutons.
Strain the sauce around the chicken and garnish with mushrooms and ham.

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.

Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,172 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Ham + chickentop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,497 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Ham + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,486 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken legs: Form the main protein, cooking through over the fire to become tender and juicy.
Salad oil or oiled butter: Coats the chicken so it stays moist and browns lightly on the grill.
Short pieces of ham: Adds savoury, salty flavour as both a fried element and a garnish.
Mushrooms: Add earthy flavour and moisture as a garnish.

“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.