Name: Sauce, Mustard
Ingredients: 4 pints white sauce; 2 teaspoons made mustard; salt; pepper

Why it works: Mustard and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sauce, Mustard

Ingredients

4 pints white sauce
2 teaspoons made mustard
salt
pepper

Directions

Add the made mustard to the white sauce.
Season with salt and pepper.
Serve with grilled herrings.

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.

Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Sauce + mustardtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,120 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + peppertop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,303 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 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

White sauce: Forms the creamy base that carries the mustard flavour and gives the sauce its body.
Made mustard: Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the white sauce.