Name: Blanquette of Chicken with Cucumbers
Ingredients: 2 chicken fillets; Butter (for frying); Coarse sea salt; 2 cucumbers

Why it works: Chicken and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,902 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Blanquette of Chicken with Cucumbers

Ingredients

2 chicken fillets
Butter (for frying)
Coarse sea salt
2 cucumbers

Directions

Clarify some butter in a sauté pan.
Place the chicken fillets skin-side down on a table.
Remove the inner fillet, cut it into small pieces (about the size of a coin), and add them to the butter.
Cook over high heat for 1 minute, stirring constantly, then set aside to let the butter drain.
Trim the chicken neatly and place it in béchamel sauce.
Peel and seed the cucumbers, then cut them into pieces the size of a coin.
Fry the cucumber pieces until they are a light golden brown.

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.

Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Chicken + cucumbertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Butter + cucumbertop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,185 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).