Name: Broiled Fowls
Ingredients: 1 cleaned fowl; coarse sea salt; black pepper; mushroom sauce

Why it works: Pepper and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Broiled Fowls

Ingredients

1 cleaned fowl
coarse sea salt
black pepper
mushroom sauce

Directions

Prepare

Split the fowl down the back and spread the sides open.
Skewer the wings with the liver and gizzard.
Season with salt and pepper.

Broil and serve

Broil until cooked through.
Place the fowl on a dish with the hollow side down.
Serve with mushroom 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 + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,480 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Pepper + saucetop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,303 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Pepper and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl: Forms the main body of the dish, and its cooking through is the central goal.
Mushroom sauce: Adds moisture and savoury flavour when served alongside the cooked fowl.

“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.