Name: Artichoke Sauce
Ingredients: 1 cup milk; butter the size of an egg; a little salt; a little pepper; 1 cup sweet cream; 2 tablespoons flour; juice of ½ lemon; 3 teaspoons vinegar; 1 egg yolk

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Artichoke Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

In a double boiler, combine milk, butter, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil.
While boiling, stir in sweet cream mixed with flour until smooth.
Once it thickens, add lemon juice and vinegar, stirring constantly.
Pour the mixture over the well-beaten egg yolk.
Serve cold or hot.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 (milk, butter, egg, pepper, cream, flour, vinegar):

Lemonthe original
Strawberryfits about as well
Vanillafits about as well
Figfits about as well

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