Name: Broiled Fish
Ingredients: fish; vinegar; coarse sea salt; black pepper; butter; parsley; lettuce; lemon

Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Broiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Rub vinegar on the fish.
Season the fish with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Place the fish on a well-greased broiler.

Broil and serve

Broil the fish until cooked through.
Serve with melted butter, finely chopped parsley, garnished with lettuce and sliced lemon.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish: Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a flaky texture under the broiler.
Vinegar: Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour as the dish is served.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, vinegar, pepper, butter, parsley, lemon):

Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Carrotfits about as well
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, vinegar, pepper, butter, parsley, lemon. 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.