Name: Egg Sauce
Ingredients: 1 cup bottled salad dressing; ½ cup sweet cream; 2 teaspoons red bell peppers, chopped fine; 1 hard boiled egg, chopped medium fine; 1 teaspoon finely minced parsley (optional)

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 ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

1 cup bottled salad dressing
½ cup sweet cream
2 teaspoons red bell peppers, chopped fine
1 hard boiled egg, chopped medium fine
1 teaspoon finely minced parsley (optional)

Directions

Make the sauce

In a bowl, combine the salad dressing, sweet cream, red bell peppers, hard‑boiled egg, and parsley if using.
Stir all the ingredients together until well mixed.

Warm and serve

Place the bowl in a pan of hot water to warm the sauce.
Serve the sauce with fish or boiled tongue.

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).
Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,765 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together21,449 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together42,166 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Cream + parsleytop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,392 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

What each ingredient does

Bottled salad dressing: Provides the main body, tang and flavor base of the sauce.
Sweet cream: Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Hard boiled egg: Adds body and a soft, rich texture to the sauce.