Name: Italian Sauce, White
Ingredients: Veloute sauce; minced shallots; fried mushrooms; chopped parsley; white wine

Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Italian Sauce, White

Ingredients

Directions

In a saucepan, combine Veloute sauce with minced and fried shallots and mushrooms.
Stir in chopped parsley and white wine.
Heat gently until well mixed 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,982 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,765 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together881 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,132 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, shallot, mushroom, white wine):

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Thymefits better
Parsleythe original

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