Name: Terrapin Sauce
Ingredients: ½ cup butter; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; a pinch of grated nutmeg; 4 eggs; equal bulk of glaze; 2 tablespoons vinegar; a squeeze of lemon juice; a pinch of salt

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Terrapin Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

In a saucepan, combine butter, pepper, and nutmeg.
Place the saucepan in boiling water (bain-marie).
Add eggs and stir constantly until they begin to thicken, avoiding boiling.
Gradually add the glaze while stirring continuously until thick like custard.
Stir in vinegar; if not acidic enough, add lemon juice and salt carefully.
If the sauce curdles or thickens too much, add a few drops of cold water and stir.
Serve immediately with fish, lobster, chops, or grilled meats.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together24,377 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, egg, vinegar, lemon):

Parsleyfits better
Tarragonfits better
Dillfits better
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, egg, vinegar, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.