Name: Espagnole Sauce
Ingredients: 2 egg yolks; 2 tablespoons cream; 1 tablespoon granulated gelatin; 1 cup hot chicken stock; Cooked chicken, veal, or lamb; Lettuce leaves; Olives stuffed with peppers

Why it works: Lettuce and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,580 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Espagnole Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make a white sauce.
Beat the egg yolks slightly and dilute with cream.
Dissolve gelatin in hot chicken stock.
Mix the gelatin mixture with the white sauce.
When cool, dip pieces of cooked chicken, veal, or lamb in the sauce.
When cold, dip again for another coating.
Serve very cold on lettuce leaves and garnish with olives.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cream + gelatintop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,628 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together11,888 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).
Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together30,263 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, gelatin, chicken, olive, pepper):

Capsicumbetter flavor fit
Potatobetter flavor fit
Tomatobetter flavor fit
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, gelatin, chicken, olive, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).