Name: Smoked Fish Fritters
Ingredients: smoked fish (bloater, haddock, salmon, or kippered herring); pepper; cayenne; frying batter; fat for frying; fried parsley for garnish

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Smoked Fish Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Fillet the smoked fish and cut it into small pieces.
Season the fish pieces with pepper and cayenne.
Dip each piece into the prepared frying batter.
Fry in hot fat (400°F/200°C) until crisp and golden.
Drain well on a cloth.
Dish up on a folded napkin, garnish with fried parsley, and serve.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Smoked fish + peppertop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Smoked fish + parsleytop 35% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together13 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).