Name: Hollandaise Sauce
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon lemon juice; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1/3 cup boiling water; 1 cup unsalted butter; cayenne pepper to taste

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,047 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Divide the butter into three parts.
In a double boiler, combine one part of the butter with the egg yolks and lemon juice.
Stir constantly until the butter melts.
Add the second part of the butter and continue stirring until thickened.
Add the third part of the butter and stir until thickened.
Add boiling water and cook for one minute.
Stir in salt and cayenne 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).