Name: Sauce Remoulade
Ingredients: ½ cup mayonnaise sauce; 2 teaspoons capers; 2 teaspoons gherkins; ½ ounce eschalots; 2 anchovies; 1 teaspoon French mustard

Why it works: Capers and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce Remoulade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients

Mince the eschalots, capers, and gherkins.
Clean the anchovies and soak them in hot water for 1 minute.
Remove the heads and backbones from the anchovies and chop them.

Make the sauce

Mix the minced ingredients with the French mustard.
Stir the mixture into the mayonnaise sauce.

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.

Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together624 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together678 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + mustardtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,120 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise sauce: Forms the creamy base that carries all the other flavours.
Capers: Add sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the mayonnaise.
Gherkins: Add tangy acidity and a crisp, chopped texture.
Anchovies: Contribute a deep, savoury umami flavour.
French mustard: Adds sharpness and helps tie the mixture together.