Name: Fish Sauce
Ingredients: 2 egg yolks; ½ cup oil; 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce; 1 grated onion; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; a pinch of cayenne pepper

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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine the egg yolks and oil to make mayonnaise.
Stir in Worcestershire sauce, grated onion, salt, and pepper.
Add lemon juice, chopped parsley, and cayenne pepper. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

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).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 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

Egg yolks: Emulsify the oil into mayonnaise, giving the sauce its thick, creamy body.
Oil: Provides the fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the sauce its richness and smoothness.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Grated onion: Adds savoury aroma and flavour to the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sauce, pepper, lemon, 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.