Name: Sardines and Toast
Ingredients: 5 or 6 sardines; 5 slices of toast; ½ pint melted butter; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; 1 tablespoon lemon juice (optional)

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 ↓

Sardines and Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Scrape and bone the sardines.
Place each sardine on a separate piece of toast and keep warm.

Finish and serve

Melt the butter and mix in the chopped parsley and lemon juice, if using.
Pour the melted butter mixture over the sardines and serve immediately.

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).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines: Provide the main flavour and protein, forming the centre of the dish.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, carrying the parsley and lemon flavour over the fish.
Toast: Gives a crisp base that holds the fish and soaks up the warm butter.

“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.