Name: Boiled Fowls
Ingredients: 1 whole fowl; water; ¼ pint cream; 1 small piece fresh butter

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Fowls

Ingredients

1 whole fowl
water
¼ pint cream
1 small piece fresh butter

Directions

Boil the fowl in a large pot of water for 15 minutes.
In a separate pan, heat the cream and butter together, stirring until melted.
Pour the cream sauce over the boiled fowl before serving.

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.

Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl: Provides the main protein and body of the dish, cooked through by boiling.
Cream: Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Butter: Adds fat and flavour, helping the cream sauce feel rich and smooth.

“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.