Name: Chicken Stew with Dumplings
Ingredients: 1 chicken or fowl (about 3 pounds); 2 tablespoons butter; 3 tablespoons flour; 1 large onion, finely chopped; 3 slices of carrot, finely chopped; 3 slices of turnip, finely chopped; 3 pints boiling water; Salt and pepper to taste

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Stew with Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the chicken into serving slices and wash them.
In a deep stewpan, add the chicken and boiling water, then bring to a boil.
In a separate saucepan, cook the carrot, turnip, and onion in butter over low heat for 30 minutes, stirring often.
Strain the vegetables and place the strainer in the stewpan with the chicken. Mash the vegetables and rub them through the strainer.
Skim 2 tablespoons of chicken fat from the stew and add it to the saucepan with the cooked vegetables.
When hot, stir in the flour and cook until dark brown, then mix it with the chicken.
Simmer the stew gently for about 2 hours until the chicken is tender, seasoning with salt and pepper.
Twelve minutes before serving, bring the stew to a boil and add the dumplings, cooking for 10 minutes.
Serve the chicken in the center of a platter with dumplings arranged around the edge.

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.

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,874 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, flour, carrot, turnip, pepper):

Leekfits better
Parsnipfits better
Okrafits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, carrot, turnip, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.