Name: Grilled Bream with Shallot Sauce
Ingredients: 1 fresh bream; oil for grilling; 3.5 ounces butter; 2 tablespoons minced shallot; 2 hard-boiled eggs, minced; 2 tablespoons Harvey's sauce; juice of 1 lemon; minced parsley

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Grilled Bream with Shallot Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

Clean the bream by scaling and cutting off the dorsal and side fins, and trimming the tail.
Oil the fish and grill it over moderate heat, basting with oil occasionally.

Make the shallot sauce

Melt the butter in a saucepan.
Add the minced shallot and cook for 3 minutes.
Stir in the minced hard-boiled eggs, Harvey's sauce, lemon juice, and minced parsley.

Serve

Serve the grilled bream on a hot plate topped with the shallot sauce.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,523 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Shallot + saucetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,303 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Bream: Forms the main body of the dish, cooked by grilling until flaky and opaque.
Butter: Carries the shallot flavour and adds richness to the sauce.
Shallot: Adds a mild, sweet aromatic base to the sauce once softened.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add body and a soft, creamy texture to the sauce.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and egg sauce.

The step that matters

Grilling the bream. Grilling over moderate heat with occasional oiling helps the skin crisp and the flesh cook through without drying out. Too much heat can scorch the outside before the centre is cooked.

“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.

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Grilled Bream with Shallot Sauce