Name: Wow Wow Sauce for Staved or Bouilli Beef
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons butter; 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour; parsley leaves, finely chopped; 2 or 3 pickled cucumbers or walnuts, quartered and diced

Why it works: Parsley and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,564 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Wow Wow Sauce for Staved or Bouilli Beef

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
parsley leaves, finely chopped
2 or 3 pickled cucumbers or walnuts, quartered and diced

Directions

Make the sauce

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.
Stir in the flour until well combined.
Add the finely chopped parsley and diced pickles or walnuts.
Cook for a few minutes until the mixture is heated through.

Serve

Serve over stewed or bouilli beef.

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.

Parsley + cucumbertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,564 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour 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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Provides fat and richness, forming the base of the sauce with the flour.
All-purpose flour: Combines with the melted butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Pickled cucumbers or walnuts: Adds tangy acidity or nutty texture, giving the sauce its distinctive flavour.