Name: Wine Sauce No. 2
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon flour; 2 teaspoons butter; ½ cup water; juice of ½ lemon; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; a pinch of nutmeg

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,047 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Wine Sauce No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Mix flour with butter in a saucepan.
Add water, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
Place on high heat and stir continuously.
When the sauce boils two or three times, remove from heat and serve.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, pepper, nutmeg):

Lemonthe original
Limeabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, pepper, nutmeg. 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).