Name: Sole Pie
Ingredients: 2 large soles; 2 pounds silver eels; crumbs of bread; butter; lemon peel; 1 anchovy; chopped parsley; spices; 2 hard-boiled eggs

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 ↓

Sole Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the flesh from the soles.
Boil the silver eels until cooked, then pick the meat from the bones.
Return the bones to the cooking liquid and add the soles' bones and skin.
Boil down the mixture until reduced to about ½ pint.
Make a forcemeat by mixing eel meat with bread crumbs, butter, lemon peel, anchovy, parsley, spices, and chopped hard-boiled eggs.
Place the forcemeat at the bottom of a dish and lay the pieces of sole on top.

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).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,260 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).
Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,330 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,697 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).