Name: Potatoes a LA Maitre D'hotel
Ingredients: Cold potatoes; Maitre d'Hotel sauce; Lemon juice; Pepper; Coarse sea salt

Why it works: Potato and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,303 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the Maitre d'Hotel sauce as per the recipe provided elsewhere.
Flavor the sauce with lemon juice, pepper, and coarse sea salt.
Slice the cold potatoes and add them to the sauce.
Simmer for five minutes, then dish 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.

Potato + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together8,303 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,039 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Potato + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,229 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Potato + saucetop 14% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together1,072 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + peppertop 17% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together15,299 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and pepper share little aroma chemistry, yet 15,299 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 (potato, sauce, pepper):

Limebetter flavor fit
Lemonthe original
Mangoabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, sauce, 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).