Name: Roast Chicken
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken (3 to 4 pounds); 1 pint stale bread, broken into fine crumbs; 1 teaspoon salt; ½ teaspoon pepper; ½ teaspoon powdered sage; ½ teaspoon summer savory; ½ cup butter; Giblets (heart, liver, gizzard, neck)

Why it works: Sage and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 237 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Clean the chicken by singeing, removing pin feathers, and gutting it. Remove the neck and windpipe.
Wash and wipe the inside of the chicken.
Prepare the giblets by removing membranes, veins, and arteries. Wash and cook them in cold water until tender.
In a bowl, moisten the bread crumbs and mix in salt, pepper, sage, summer savory, and butter.
Stuff the chicken with the mixture, sewing the neck skin closed and filling the body cavity.
Truss the chicken by drawing the thighs close to the body and crossing the legs over the tail, tying with twine.
Insert skewers through the thighs and wings to secure them close to the body, or use string if skewers are unavailable.

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.

Sage + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together237 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together671 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sage + livertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together229 recipes

Shared aroma: 1,8-cineol (eucalyptus, camphor).

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

Swap the summer savory

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, bread, pepper, sage, butter, liver):

Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Parsleyfits about as well
Summer savorythe original

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