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Spanish Paella Recipe

To start, this dish is pronounced pie-yay-ya. I work in a Spanish restaurant, and almost everyone gets the name wrong…drives me crazy.Anyway, this is a traditional...

By chow · From Open Recipes · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and chicken match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 4,569 recipes mention both. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

The recipe

2-3 servings

Ingredients

Contains: shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By chow. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Rice + chickentop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,569 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Saffron + ricetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together628 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Chicken + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10,839 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  4. Saffron + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Rice + peastop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (saffron, rice, chicken, lobster, clam, pepper, garlic):

  1. Beansbetter flavor fit
  2. Peasthe original
  3. Sesameabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against saffron, rice, chicken, lobster, clam, pepper, garlic. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).