Name: Creole Sauce
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons butter; 1 green pepper, finely chopped; 1 small onion, finely chopped; 2 tomatoes, cut in pieces or 1 cup canned tomatoes; 10 olives, pitted and sliced; 1 cup Brown Sauce; 2 tablespoons sherry wine

Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Creole Sauce

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter
1 green pepper, finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 tomatoes, cut in pieces or 1 cup canned tomatoes
10 olives, pitted and sliced
1 cup Brown Sauce
2 tablespoons sherry wine

Directions

Melt the butter in a saucepan.
Add the green pepper and onion; cook for 5 minutes.
Stir in the tomatoes and olives; cook for 3 minutes.
Add the Brown Sauce and bring to a boil.
Stir in the sherry wine and serve with steaks, chops, or fillet of beef.

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.

Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,539 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,779 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Tomato + winetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Fat that softens the vegetables and carries flavor into the sauce.
Green pepper: Adds bright, slightly bitter vegetable flavor and body as it softens.
Onion: Builds savory sweetness as it cooks down into the sauce base.
Tomatoes: Provide acidity, moisture, and fruity flavor that rounds out the sauce.
Brown sauce: Supplies the rich, savory base that the sauce is built on.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, tomato, olive, sauce, sherry, wine):

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits better
Shallotfits about as well
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, tomato, olive, sauce, sherry, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.