Name: Salmi of Prairie Chicken
Ingredients: Prairie chickens, cut into joints; Bones, skin, and odds and ends of the chicken; 1 onion, minced; Sweet herbs (to taste); Pork (to taste); 1 pint water; Sherry (to taste); Lemon juice (to taste); Brown flour (if needed)

Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Salmi of Prairie Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the prairie chicken into joints and set aside.
Combine the chicken bones, skin, minced onion, sweet herbs, pork, and water in a pot, then stew the mixture for 1 hour.

Make the gravy

Skim and strain the stew into a chafing dish.
Add sherry and lemon juice to the strained gravy.
Thicken the gravy with brown flour if needed, then boil the gravy.

Serve

Pour the hot gravy over the reserved chicken.
Serve immediately.

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 + porktop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,417 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,814 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,214 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Chicken + sherrytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together891 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,092 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Prairie chickens: Provides the meat that is served in the finished stew.
Brown flour: Thickens the gravy as it boils, giving it body.
Sherry: Adds a sweet, aromatic note to the gravy.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the gravy's rich flavor.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, pork, sherry, flour):

Avocadofits better
Coconutfits better
Grapefits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, pork, sherry, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.