Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,036 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓
The recipe
six filletsIngredients
Contains: wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
Prepare the sauce
Use the skin, bones, and trimmings to make a broth.
Pass the broth through a fine sieve to smooth it.
Add parsley and gherkins to the broth and keep it hot in a bain-marie.
Prepare and fry the fillets
Make six neat fillets from the brill.
Bread-crumb the fillets and fry them in boiling fat.
Drain and dry the fillets, then sprinkle with salt.
Serve
Serve the fillets on a hot dish garnished with parsley and lemon, with the sauce served separately.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together14,036 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Parsley + breadtop 10% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together8,588 recipes
Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
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Bread + lemontop 13% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together8,433 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Brill
- Provides the delicate white flesh that is the main component of the dish.
- Broth
- Made from the skin, bones, and trimmings, it forms the moist, flavourful sauce.
- Bread crumbs
- Form a crisp, golden coating on the fillets when fried.
- Parsley
- Adds fresh, herbal flavour to the sauce.
- Gherkins
- Add a sharp, acidic tang to the sauce.
The step that matters
Drying the fillets before frying. Excess moisture on the fish turns to steam in the hot fat, which can make the bread crumb coating soggy and cause the oil to spatter. Thoroughly drained, dry fillets brown and crisp more evenly.
“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.
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