Name: Crab Sauce
Ingredients: cooked crab meat, minced; a few mushrooms, minced; nutmeg, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; red pepper, to taste; lemon juice, to taste; Bechamel sauce; chopped parsley (optional)

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Crab Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

In a saucepan, combine the minced crab meat and mushrooms.
Season with nutmeg, coarse sea salt, red pepper, and lemon juice.
Simmer the mixture in Bechamel sauce for a few minutes.
If desired, add chopped parsley before serving.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, mushroom, nutmeg, pepper, lemon, sauce):

Thymefits about as well
Parsleythe original
Marjoramfits about as well
Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, mushroom, nutmeg, pepper, lemon, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.