Why it works: Summer savory and pepper work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 671 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓
Boiled Fowl
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the liver, gizzard, heart, and lower part of the legs in ¼ cup of water until tender.
Chop the boiled parts finely and mix with drawn butter, bread crumbs, coarse sea salt, summer savory, and black pepper.
Stuff the fowl with the mixture.
Place the fowl in sufficient water to cover it and stew gently until tender.
Serve with drawn butter.
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.
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Summer savory + peppertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together671 recipes
Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
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Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Bread + summer savorytop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together241 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Liver + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together731 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the summer savory
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, butter, bread, pepper):
- Sagefits better
- Parsleyfits better
- Thymefits better
- Summer savorythe original
Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter, bread, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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