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Best Cranberry Chicken

"My mom found this recipe years ago, and now it's become a cheap and easy weeknight favorite at my house."

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and cranberry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 148 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

12 chicken thighs
Prep10 min
Cook1 hr

Ingredients

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

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C) and grease a 9x13-inch baking dish.

  2. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat, add the chopped onion, and cook for 5 minutes until soft.

  3. In a bowl, stir together the ketchup, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, dry mustard powder, and cranberry sauce, then add the cooked onion and mix well.

  4. Arrange the chicken thighs skin side up in the baking dish and spoon the cranberry sauce mixture evenly over them.

  5. Bake for about 50 minutes, basting the thighs with the sauce from the dish halfway through, until the thickest part reaches 165°F (74°C).

  6. Let the chicken rest for 5 minutes before serving with the sauce spooned over the top.

By allrecipes. 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. Chicken + cranberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Berry + cranberrytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together68 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Onion + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,808 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Onion + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Ketchup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, chicken, ketchup, sugar, apple cider vinegar, mustard, berry):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Potatoabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Tomatoabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, chicken, ketchup, sugar, apple cider vinegar, mustard, berry. 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).