Name: Hot Salad Sauce
Ingredients: 1 ounce butter; 1 ounce flour; ½ pint boiling water; 1 teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon white pepper; 1 raw egg yolk; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg; Cayenne pepper to taste

Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Hot Salad Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat and stir in the flour until smooth.
Gradually add the boiling water, stirring until smooth.
Season with salt and white pepper, then set aside from the heat.

Finish and serve

In a salad bowl, combine the egg yolk, salt, and grated nutmeg.
Add cayenne pepper to taste and mix well.

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.

Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,375 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter: Enriches the sauce and carries flavour while forming the base with flour.
Flour: Thickens the boiling water into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Raw egg yolk: Adds richness and emulsifying fat to the finished sauce.

Swap the white pepper

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

Cinnamonfits better
Parsleyfits better
Allspicefits better
White pepperthe original

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

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.