Name: Baked Chicken
Ingredients: young chickens; coarse sea salt; black pepper; flour; butter; water

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked Chicken

Ingredients

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

Prepare the young chickens as for frying and cut them into joints.
Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper to taste.
Roll the chicken pieces in flour.
Lay the chicken snugly in a baking dish.

Bake and serve

Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven, basting occasionally with a gravy made of butter, water, and seasoning.
Enjoy a more palatable dish than frying.

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.

Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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).
Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour: Forms a light coating that helps the chicken brown and keeps the surface from drying out.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the basting gravy, promoting browning and a savoury flavour.
Young chickens: Provide the main protein; cutting into joints gives pieces that cook evenly in the oven.

“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.