Name: Chicken Broiled with Bacon
Ingredients: 2 tender spring chickens; 1 pinch salt; ½ pinch pepper; 1 tablespoon sweet oil; 6 small toasts; ¼ cup maitre d’hotel butter

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 ↓

Chicken Broiled with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Singe, draw, and wipe the chickens clean. Cut off the heads and split them without separating.
Season the chickens with salt, pepper, and sweet oil, turning them well in the seasoning.
Broil the chickens for 9 minutes on each side.
Prepare the toasts on a hot dish.
Arrange the broiled chickens over the toasts and spread the maitre d’hotel butter on top.

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 + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,958 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).