Name: Egg Sauce
Ingredients: 2 egg yolks; 2 egg whites; 2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley; or 2 tablespoons finely chopped fennel

Why it works: Parsley and fennel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 625 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

2 egg yolks
2 egg whites
2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
or 2 tablespoons finely chopped fennel

Directions

Pound the egg yolks until smooth.
Chop the egg whites finely.
Mix the pounded yolks and chopped whites together.
Add the finely chopped parsley or fennel and stir well.

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.

Parsley + fenneltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together625 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,765 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Egg + fenneltop 35% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together376 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks: Pounded smooth, they form the rich, creamy base of the sauce.
Egg whites: Chopped finely, they add body and texture without overwhelming the yolks.
Parsley or fennel: Finely chopped, it adds fresh, herbal aroma and flavour to the sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the fennel

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, parsley):

Dillbetter flavor fit
Tarragonbetter flavor fit
Capersbetter flavor fit
Fennelthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, parsley. 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).

“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.