Name: White Wine Sauce
Ingredients: ½ cup white wine; 2 tablespoons olive oil; ½ cup stock; ½ teaspoon mustard; 1 bay leaf; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon flour; 1 pod red pepper, minced; ½ teaspoon minced parsley

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

White Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

Boil stock and white wine with bay leaf, olive oil, salt, red pepper, flour, mustard, and parsley.

Serve

Serve with cold turkey or birds.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,649 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,950 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,588 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 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

White wine: Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce as it reduces.
Olive oil: Adds fat and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Stock: Supplies the savory liquid base of the sauce.
Flour: Thickens the sauce by binding the liquid as it boils.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, olive, flour, pepper, parsley):

Shallotfits better
Carrotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, olive, flour, pepper, parsley. 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.