Name: Sauce for Croquette Mixture
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon butter; 1 teaspoon onion juice; 2 tablespoons flour; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 cup milk or cream; ½ teaspoon pepper; 1 egg; dash of cayenne; dash of nutmeg

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sauce for Croquette Mixture

Ingredients

Directions

In a double boiler, scald the milk or cream.
Rub the butter and flour together to form a paste.
Stir the paste into the scalding milk until thickened.
Add the onion juice, salt, pepper, cayenne, nutmeg, and stir well.
Remove from heat and stir in a beaten egg, then return to heat for 1 minute without boiling.
Add 2 cups of finely minced meat and mix well.
Pour the mixture onto a flat dish and refrigerate for 2 hours to stiffen before molding.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Spinachfits better
Potatofits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, pepper, egg, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.