Name: How to Give a Dinner
Ingredients: warm stock; white sauce; slices of chicken; thin slices of ham; pickled gherkins; beetroot or red skin of a chili; parsley; lobster-claw

Why it works: Beetroot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 745 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

How to Give a Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare warm stock and remove from heat.
Stir in white sauce for a few minutes and pour into a small basin.
Once cooled, the sauce will set into a jelly.
On a plate, pour a little white sauce and layer with thin slices of chicken.
Dip ham in stock and spread over chicken, then cover with more chicken slices.
Top with remaining white sauce, reserving some for later.
Once set, cut into oval pieces resembling lobster cutlets.
Carefully lift each cutlet and cover edges with nearly set white sauce.
Cut tiny green leaves from pickled gherkins and red leaves from beetroot or chili.
Place four leaves in a star shape on each cutlet, securing with a drop of white sauce.
Add a small piece of parsley in the center of each star and a lobster-claw.
Arrange cutlets in a silver dish around the aspic jelly, garnishing with parsley.

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.

Beetroot + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together745 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,497 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Chicken + parsleytop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,314 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Beetroot + lobstertop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together94 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

Swap the beetroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, chicken, ham, parsley, lobster):

Mustardfits better
Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, chicken, ham, parsley, lobster. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.