Name: Bacon and Fowls
Ingredients: 3 lbs bacon; 2 fowls; nearly 2 lbs rice; pints of broth from bacon and fowls; 3 onions; ½ oz cloves; ½ oz peppercorns; 1 teaspoon allspice

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bacon and Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the bacon for 1 to 2 hours.
Prepare the fowls in the same pot.
Add the rice and broth from the bacon and fowls.
Chop the onions and add them to the pot.
Add the cloves, peppercorns, and allspice.
Simmer for ½ hour until everything is cooked through.

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.

Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,433 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Rice + clovetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,982 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,901 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Onion + allspicetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,270 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon: Supplies rendered fat and smoky, salty flavour to the broth and stew.
Fowls: Provide meat and body-building flavour as they cook down into the broth.
Rice: Absorbs liquid and thickens the stew as it cooks.
Onions: Add savoury sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften in the broth.