Name: Hollandaise Sauce
Ingredients: ½ cup butter; 4 egg yolks; 1½ tablespoons lemon juice; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and 41,227 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

½ cup butter
4 egg yolks
1½ tablespoons lemon juice
¼ teaspoon salt

Directions

Beat the butter until soft and creamy.
Add the egg yolks one at a time, beating until blended with the butter.
Stir in the lemon juice and salt.

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.

Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together44,316 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon share little aroma chemistry, yet 44,316 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 (butter, egg):

Lemonthe original
Vanillaabout as good a flavor fit
Coconutabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg. 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).