Name: Boiled Chicken
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken; water; flour; butter; oyster sauce or celery sauce

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Flour a white cloth and wrap the chicken in it.

Cook

Place the wrapped chicken in a pot of cold water.
Bring to a boil and then simmer for one hour.

Serve

Serve with butter and your choice of oyster sauce or celery 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.

Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Chicken + oystertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together972 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Flour + oystertop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,582 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, 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

Chicken: Is the main protein that becomes tender as it simmers in the water.
Flour: Dusts the cloth so the chicken is wrapped and held in shape during cooking.
Butter: Adds richness and fat to the chicken when served.

“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.