Name: Scalloped Vegetables
Ingredients: Potatoes; Onions; Cabbage; Cauliflower; Salt; Butter; White pepper; Thin White Sauce

Why it works: Cabbage and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 305 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Scalloped Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Cut potatoes into cubes and quarter or tear apart onions. Separate the flowerets of cauliflower and pull apart cabbage leaves if not separated before cooking.
Season the vegetables with 2 teaspoons of salt for every quart of water used to boil them.
Place the seasoned vegetables into a baking dish.
Pour thin White Sauce over the vegetables.
Bake until heated through and the top is golden brown.

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.

Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together305 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,001 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + cabbagetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together275 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + cauliflowertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together36 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion, cabbage, cauliflower, butter, sauce):

Garlicfits better
Capersfits better
Parsleyfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, cabbage, cauliflower, butter, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.