Name: Blanquette of Chicken with Cucumbers
Ingredients: 2 fine chickens; butter (clarified); coarse sea salt; 2 cucumbers; sugar; 1 egg yolk; cream

Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Blanquette of Chicken with Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the legs of the chickens and place them in a pot of consomme.
In a sauté pan, melt clarified butter and lay the chicken fillets skin-side down.
Remove the inner fillet, cut it into small pieces, and add to the pan.
Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and cook over high heat for 1 minute, stirring constantly.
Set the pan aside to let the butter drain from the chicken, then trim the fillets.
Prepare a béchamel sauce and add the chicken to it.
Peel and seed the cucumbers, then cut them into small pieces.
Fry the cucumbers in clarified butter until lightly browned, then drain on a sieve.
Stew the cucumbers gently with a little sugar and salt until nearly dry, then drain again.
Combine the stewed cucumbers with the chicken and béchamel sauce, heating until hot.
Mix in the egg yolk with a little cream, then serve the dish.

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.

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).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Chicken + cucumbertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

Swap the cucumber

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

Potatofits better
Leekfits better
Asparagusfits better
Cucumberthe original

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