Name: Concombres, a LA Poulette
Ingredients: cucumbers; butter; parsley; leeks; seasoning

Why it works: Parsley and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 759 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Chop the leeks and parsley finely.
In a saucepan, combine cucumbers, butter, chopped parsley, and leeks.
Season well and shake the saucepan to mix ingredients.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Parsley + leektop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together759 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cucumber + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,564 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cucumber + leektop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together32 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together28,543 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + leektop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together848 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, leek):

Chivebetter flavor fit
Carrotbetter flavor fit
Shallotbetter flavor fit
Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, leek. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).