Name: Tomato and Boiled Fowl
Ingredients: 1 whole fowl; 2 cups water; 2 tomatoes; Salt to taste; Celery for salad

Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato and Boiled Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the fowl in water until cooked through.
Remove the fowl and let it cool.
Chop the tomatoes and mix with salt.
Serve the fowl with the tomato mixture and a side of celery salad.

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.

Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl: Provides the main protein, which cooks through in simmering water to become tender.
Tomatoes: Add acidity and fresh moisture that brighten the rich, mild flavor of the chicken.

“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.