Name: Stuffing for Baked Fish
Ingredients: 1 cup bread crumbs; 1 teaspoon grated onion; 1 teaspoon chopped capers; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon chopped parsley; ½ cup stock or milk

Why it works: Capers and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stuffing for Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, grated onion, chopped capers, salt, pepper, and chopped parsley.
Moisten the mixture with stock or milk until it reaches a desired consistency.

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.

Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,381 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs: Provides the bulk of the stuffing and absorbs liquid to give it body.
Stock or milk: Adds moisture so the crumbs soften and hold together as a stuffing.
Grated onion: Adds aromatic flavor and a little moisture to the mixture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, capers, pepper, parsley, milk):

Shallotfits better
Chivefits better
Lettucefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, capers, pepper, parsley, milk. 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.