Name: Green Goddess Dressing
Ingredients: 1 cup sour cream; 1 cup mayonnaise; 1 tbsp lemon juice; 1 tbsp white wine vinegar; 1 tbsp anchovy paste; 1 tbsp minced parsley; ⅓ cup diced onion; salt; pepper

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,036 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the dressing

Mix together sour cream, mayonnaise, lemon juice, vinegar, anchovy paste, parsley and onion.
Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Store

Dressing may be refrigerated in covered container for up to 2 weeks.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together14,036 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together34,118 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,039 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lemon + white winetop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together3,764 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
White wine + vinegartop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,123 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour cream: Adds body and tang, giving the dressing a creamy, thick texture.
Mayonnaise: Provides fat and emulsified richness that gives the dressing its smooth body.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the rich fats.
Anchovy paste: Contributes savory depth, adding umami without a distinctly fishy flavor.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, lemon, white wine, vinegar, anchovy, parsley, pepper):

Capsicumbetter flavor fit
Potatobetter flavor fit
Shallotbetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, lemon, white wine, vinegar, anchovy, parsley, 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).

“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.