Name: Egg Sauce
Ingredients: 2 egg yolks; 2 egg whites; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; optional: fennel instead of parsley

Why it works: Parsley and fennel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 625 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

2 egg yolks
2 egg whites
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
optional: fennel instead of parsley

Directions

Pound the egg yolks until smooth.
Chop the egg whites finely.
Mix the pounded yolks with the chopped whites.
Add chopped parsley and mix well.
For variation, substitute fennel for parsley.

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.

Parsley + fenneltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together625 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,765 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Egg + fenneltop 35% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together376 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, fennel):

Tarragonbetter flavor fit
Dillbetter flavor fit
Parsleythe original
Nutmegabout as good a flavor fit

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