Name: Petits Pates of Sturgeon
Ingredients: sturgeon, roasted; mushrooms, minced; cream sauce; lemon juice; 1 egg yolk; cream; salt

Why it works: Cream and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Petits Pates of Sturgeon

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the roasted sturgeon into small squares.
In a saucepan, combine the sturgeon, minced mushrooms, and cream sauce.
Squeeze in a little lemon juice.
Mix in the egg yolk with a little cream.
Add salt 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sturgeon + saucetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together93 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,500 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together26 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octene-3-one (sweet, fruity).

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 (sturgeon, mushroom, cream, sauce, egg):

Lemonthe original
Avocadofits about as well
Strawberryfits less well
Plumfits less well

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