Name: Roe Sauce for Shad
Ingredients: pinch of salt; cayenne pepper to taste; some chopped parsley; sherry to make a creamy consistency

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Roe Sauce for Shad

Ingredients

pinch of salt
cayenne pepper to taste
some chopped parsley
sherry to make a creamy consistency

Directions

Combine a pinch of salt, cayenne pepper, and chopped parsley in a bowl.
Add sherry gradually until the mixture reaches a creamy consistency.
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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + sherrytop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Parsley + sherrytop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,310 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).