Name: Chicken Fillets with Oysters
Ingredients: 1 raw chicken; 1 raw oyster per fillet; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; lemon juice to taste; battered paper; stock for cooking

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Fillets with Oysters

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Remove the breast from the chicken and skin it.
Flatten the meat with a rolling pin and cut it into two fillets.
Place a raw oyster in the center of each fillet.
Season lightly with pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

Cook and serve

Roll each fillet in a piece of battered paper.
Place them in a pan with a little stock.
Cook in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 15 minutes.
Remove from the oven, take off the paper, and serve with a white sauce.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,092 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Chicken + oystertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together972 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,958 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,663 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken: Forms the main body of the dish, and its lean meat cooks through during baking.
Oysters: Add a briny, savoury flavour that seasons the chicken from within as it cooks.