Name: Cakdoons, Maitre D'hotel Style
Ingredients: cardoons; maitre d'hotel sauce; chopped parsley; fleurons

Why it works: Cardoon and sauce work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and 48 recipes mention both. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

cardoons
maitre d'hotel sauce
chopped parsley
fleurons

Directions

Prepare and cook the cardoons as directed.
Let them simmer in maitre d'hotel sauce for a while.
Dish up the cardoons and pour the sauce over them.
Sprinkle with chopped parsley and garnish with fleurons before serving.

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.

Cardoon + saucetop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together48 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Cardoon + parsleytop 11% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together9 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Sauce + parsleytop 13% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together6,693 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cardoon, sauce):

Capersbetter flavor fit
Garlicbetter flavor fit
Jalapenoabout as good a flavor fit
Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cardoon, sauce. 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).