Name: To Broil Eels
Ingredients: eels; 1 egg yolk; bread crumbs; chopped parsley; chopped sage; pepper; coarse sea salt; butter

Why it works: Parsley and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Broil Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Skin and cleanse the eels.
Rub the eels with the egg yolk.
Sprinkle bread crumbs, parsley, sage, pepper, and salt over the eels.
Baste the eels well with butter.
Place the eels in a dripping pan.
Serve with parsley and butter as a 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.

Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the sage

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

Thymefits about as well
Nutmegfits about as well
Marjoramfits about as well
Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, parsley, pepper, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.