Name: Cardinal Sauce
Ingredients: reduced Veloute sauce; essence of mushrooms; lobster butter; essence of anchovies; lemon juice; cayenne; glaze from meat or fish

Why it works: Sauce and lobster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cardinal Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

In a stewpan, combine reduced Veloute sauce, essence of mushrooms, lobster butter, essence of anchovies, lemon juice, and cayenne.
Mix well and strain the sauce through a fine sieve into a bain-marie.
Before serving, incorporate the reduced glaze from the meat or fish into the sauce for added flavor.

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.

Sauce + lobstertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together909 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Mushroom + meattop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,423 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, mushroom, lobster, butter, meat):

Coconutfits better
Grapefits about as well
Lemonthe original
Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, mushroom, lobster, butter, meat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.