Name: Boiling Poultry
Ingredients: 1 pint oysters; 1 blade mace; 2 tablespoons butter; 2 tablespoons flour; ¼ lemon; ½ pint cream; white part of celery, cut into 1-inch pieces; ½ pint veal broth; salt and pepper to taste

Why it works: Lemon and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiling Poultry

Ingredients

Directions

Strain the liquor from the oysters and wash them in cold water.
Pour the liquor into a saucepan, add the oysters, mace, butter, flour, and lemon.
Bring to a boil, then add the cream and simmer gently.
Remove the mace and lemon, squeeze the lemon juice into the sauce, and serve.
Boil the celery in water until tender.
In another saucepan, combine veal broth, mace, and thicken with flour and butter.
Add cream and simmer gently, then stir in the celery and bring to a boil.
For the chicken, soak in milk for 2 hours, then rinse and dust with flour.
Cover with cold water and cook over low heat, skimming off the scum.
After 5-6 minutes, remove from heat and let sit covered for 30 minutes.
Reheat before serving and drain, then pour over white sauce made from chicken heads, necks, and veal scraps.

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.

Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,467 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + flourtop 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).
Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,905 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, flour, lemon, cream, celery, veal):

Parsleyfits better
Tarragonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, flour, lemon, cream, celery, veal. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.