Name: Fish Salad
Ingredients: 1 can Monterey mackerel, soused in tomato; 1 lettuce leaf; ½ hard boiled egg; sliced lemon; chopped green pepper; chopped green onions; chopped 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 ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Open the can of Monterey mackerel and drain.
Place the mackerel on a lettuce leaf.
Add half a hard-boiled egg and sliced lemon on the side.
Sprinkle chopped green pepper, green onions, and parsley over the fish.

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).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,655 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

Mackerel: Provides the main protein and rich flavour of the salad.
Hard-boiled egg: Adds creamy texture and mild richness alongside the fish.
Lemon: Adds acidity that brightens the oily fish.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, lettuce, egg, lemon, pepper, parsley):

Spinachfits better
Capsicumfits better
Okrafits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, lettuce, egg, lemon, pepper, parsley. 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.