Name: Mushroom Sauce
Ingredients: 1 pint rich white stock (veal or chicken); 1 tablespoon flour; 1 tablespoon butter; a few spoons of cream; a pinch of nutmeg; a pinch of cayenne pepper; salt to taste

Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the mushrooms in the rich white stock.
In a separate bowl, mix the flour and butter until smooth.
Add the flour mixture to the stock to thicken it.
Stir in the cream, nutmeg, cayenne, and salt.
Serve very hot as a sauce for fowl.

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.

Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,920 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, flour, butter, cream, pepper):

Nutmegthe original
Parsleyfits about as well
Sagefits less well
Tarragonfits less well

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