Name: Mirepoix Sauce
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons butter; ½ cup flour; 1 lemon (juice only); ⅓ cup white wine; truffles or mushrooms (optional); condiment to taste

Why it works: Butter and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Mirepoix Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter in a saucepan.
Add the flour and stir over heat until it begins to brown.
Bring the sauce to a boil, then add your chosen condiment.
For added flavor, include truffles or mushrooms at the beginning.
Stir in the lemon juice and white wine before serving.

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.

Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,083 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,832 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,209 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
White wine + truffletop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together425 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, white wine, truffle):

Lemonthe original
Plumfits about as well
Applefits about as well
Bananafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, white wine, truffle. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.