Name: Chicken or Grouse Salad
Ingredients: 3-4 hard-boiled eggs; grouse, cut into neat joints; seasonal salad ingredients; mayonnaise sauce; 1-2 pickled gherkins; chervil or tarragon (optional); tarragon vinegar (optional)

Why it works: Chervil and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chicken or Grouse Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the eggs hard and set aside.
Prepare the salad ingredients and dry them thoroughly.
On a serving dish, place a little of the salad and toss it with 1-2 spoonfuls of mayonnaise.
Layer the inferior joints of the grouse on top, add more salad, and repeat until all ingredients are used.
Pour mayonnaise over the entire salad and garnish with quartered hard-boiled eggs and sliced gherkins or filleted anchovies.
If available, sprinkle chopped chervil or tarragon over the sauce or use tarragon vinegar in the mayonnaise.

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.

Chervil + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together824 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,547 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Chervil + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together561 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sauce + tarragontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together566 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + cherviltop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together262 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).