Name: Red or Green Mayonnaise Sauce
Ingredients: hard lobster coral (powdered); Mayonnaise sauce; spinach; parsley

Why it works: Spinach and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,025 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Red or Green Mayonnaise Sauce

Ingredients

hard lobster coral (powdered)
Mayonnaise sauce
spinach
parsley

Directions

To make red mayonnaise, mix powdered hard lobster coral into the mayonnaise sauce.
For green mayonnaise, blend in finely chopped spinach or parsley.
Serve the red sauce with fish or fish salads.
Use parsley for a more agreeable flavor than spinach.

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.

Spinach + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,025 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + spinachtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together756 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + parsleytop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,693 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Lobster + spinachtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together67 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).