Name: Anchovy Salad
Ingredients: 6 anchovies; 2 heads of lettuce; 2 teaspoons chopped parsley; 1 sliced lemon; French dressing or mayonnaise sauce

Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Anchovy Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the anchovies

Wash the anchovies and soak them in water for 1 hour.
Remove the bones, heads, fins, and tails from the anchovies.

Assemble and serve

Place the anchovies on a dish with the lettuce, parsley, and sliced lemon.
Pour over a simple French dressing or mayonnaise 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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lettuce + saucetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,019 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Parsley + saucetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,693 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies: Provide the salty, savoury flavour that is the centrepiece of the salad.
Lettuce: Forms the crisp, cool base that the anchovies and dressing rest on.
French dressing or mayonnaise sauce: Adds fat and moisture, coating the leaves and balancing the saltiness of the fish.