Name: Fowl with Tarragon, Boiled
Ingredients: 1 whole fowl; 1 liver from the fowl; 2 teaspoons tarragon (fresh or dried); Salt to taste; Water for boiling; Tarragon sauce for serving

Why it works: Tarragon and sauce work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 566 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fowl with Tarragon, Boiled

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl for boiling.
Chop the liver and mix it with some forcemeat.
Add a pinch of tarragon to the mixture.
Boil the fowl in water until cooked through.
Pour tarragon sauce over the fowl before serving.

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.

Tarragon + saucetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together566 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Liver + saucetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together499 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).
Liver + tarragontop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together50 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).