Name: Sage and Onion Fritters
Ingredients: 1 parboiled onion; 1 fresh sage leaf or 2 dried sage leaves; pepper; coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); dried bread crumbs; clarified butter; flour for dusting; boiling oil for frying; fried parsley for serving

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

Sage and Onion Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make sage and onion stuffing by mixing the parboiled onion with sage, pepper, salt, and bread crumbs.
Moisten the mixture with clarified butter until it becomes a moist pulp.
Let the mixture cool and set, then roll it into small balls the size of a walnut and flatten them.
Dust the fritters with flour, dip them into batter, and fry in boiling oil until golden.
Remove with a frying basket and serve with fried parsley.

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.

Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,445 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).
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).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Swap the onion

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

Shallotfits better
Carrotfits better
Parsnipfits better
Onionthe original

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