Name: Onion Sauce for Potatoes
Ingredients: potatoes; onion; lemon juice

Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,023 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Onion Sauce for Potatoes

Ingredients

potatoes
onion
lemon juice

Directions

Prepare the potatoes and place them in a hot dish.
Make a thin onion sauce as directed in another recipe.
Season the sauce with a few drops of lemon juice.
Pour the sauce over the potatoes and serve hot.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together2,230 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Onion + lemontop 19% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together15,646 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion):

Avocadobetter flavor fit
Limebetter flavor fit
Coconutbetter flavor fit
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).