Name: A Volewent, with Chicken and Sweetbread
Ingredients: 1 cold chicken, boiled or roasted; 1 sweetbread; butter or oil for greasing; salt and pepper to taste

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 ↓

A Volewent, with Chicken and Sweetbread

Ingredients

1 cold chicken, boiled or roasted
1 sweetbread
butter or oil for greasing
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Remove the skin from the roasted chicken if using.
Cut the chicken into pieces.
Prepare the sweetbread by cleaning and cutting it into pieces.
Grease a baking dish with butter or oil.

Assemble and bake

Layer the chicken and sweetbread in the dish.
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until heated through.

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).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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