Name: Pickled Chicken
Ingredients: 4 chickens; 3 pints cold vinegar; 1½ pints water (from boiling chickens); spices (to taste)

Why it works: Chicken and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,344 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Pickled Chicken

Ingredients

4 chickens
3 pints cold vinegar
1½ pints water (from boiling chickens)
spices (to taste)

Directions

Prepare

Boil the chickens until the meat is tender and falls from the bones.
Remove the meat and place it in a stone jar.

Pickle

Pour the cold vinegar and the reserved boiling water over the meat.
Add spices to taste.
Let it sit for 2 days before using.

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 + vinegartop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,344 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens: Provide the meat that is pickled and becomes tender through boiling.
Vinegar: Acidifies the liquid, preserving the meat and giving it a sharp, tangy flavour.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.