Name: Kitchen Sficb for White Sauce
Ingredients: 2 ounces white pepper; ¼ ounce mace; 1 nutmeg; peel of 1 lemon

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Kitchen Sficb for White Sauce

Ingredients

2 ounces white pepper
¼ ounce mace
1 nutmeg
peel of 1 lemon

Directions

Pound the white pepper and mace together.
Grate the nutmeg and add it to the mixture.
Add the lemon peel and mix all ingredients together in a bottle.

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.

Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,557 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,695 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,375 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
White pepper + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,658 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

White pepper: Provides sharp, pungent heat that gives the blend its main bite.
Mace: Adds a warm, aromatic flavour with a slightly peppery edge.
Nutmeg: Contributes warm, sweet aroma that rounds out the spice blend.
Lemon peel: Adds bright citrus aroma from the oils in the peel.

“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.