Name: Chicken Livers and Bacon
Ingredients: fresh chicken livers; fat bacon; melted bacon fat or dissolved butter; buttered paper

Why it works: Chicken and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,902 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Chicken Livers and Bacon

Ingredients

fresh chicken livers
fat bacon
melted bacon fat or dissolved butter
buttered paper

Directions

Clean the chicken livers by washing them in two or three waters.
Cut the livers into slices the size of half a dollar and about ¼ inch thick.
Take an equal number of pieces of fat bacon.
String the liver and bacon pieces on short skewers, alternating them.
Dip the skewers in melted bacon fat or dissolved butter.
Wrap the skewers in buttered paper.
Bake slowly in a Dutch oven or ordinary oven until done.
Pour the gravy over the skewers and serve immediately.

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 + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Chicken + livertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together383 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,065 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).