Name: Boiled Fowl, with Oysters
Ingredients: 1 young fowl; oysters (enough to fill the inside of the fowl); 1 egg (optional); ½ cup cream (optional); 2 tablespoons flour (optional); 2 tablespoons butter (optional)

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 Fowl, with Oysters

Ingredients

1 young fowl
oysters (enough to fill the inside of the fowl)
1 egg (optional)
½ cup cream (optional)
2 tablespoons flour (optional)
2 tablespoons butter (optional)

Directions

Prepare and boil

Fill the inside of the young fowl with oysters.
Place the fowl in a jar and submerge it in a kettle of water.
Boil for 1.5 hours.
Collect the gravy from the fowl and oysters.

Make the sauce

To make a white sauce, combine the gravy with egg, cream, or a mixture of flour and butter.
Optionally, add more oysters to the sauce or serve it plain with the fowl.

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).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,103 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Oysters: Fill the fowl and flavour the gravy, and can be added to the sauce.
Egg: Thickens the white sauce when it is combined with the gravy.
Cream: Adds richness and body to the white sauce.
Flour: Thickens the white sauce, combined with butter as a roux.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the white sauce, combined with flour.

“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.