Name: Cocoa-nut Sauce
Ingredients: 1 onion, cut into thin rings; 2 cloves of garlic, chopped; 2 bay leaves; 3 ounces of butter; ½ cup of water; 2 tablespoons of finely chopped green parsley; coarse sea salt to taste; Nepal pepper to taste

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Cocoa-nut Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the onion, garlic, and bay leaves in butter until browned.
Add water and let it thicken.
Strain the mixture.
Stir in the chopped parsley, salt, and Nepal pepper to taste.

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.

Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,308 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,768 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

Swap the clove

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

Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Cuminfits better
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, garlic, butter, parsley, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.