Name: Red Herrings or Yarmouth Bloaters
Ingredients: 2 red herrings or Yarmouth bloaters; ½ cup fine bread crumbs; 2 tablespoons butter; Salt to taste; Lemon juice to taste; Fried parsley for garnish; Lemon wedges for garnish

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 ↓

Red Herrings or Yarmouth Bloaters

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Wash and dry the fish thoroughly with a cloth.
Arrange the fish in a flat baking dish.

Bake

Cover the fish with fine bread crumbs.
Dot the fish with small pieces of butter.
Season with salt and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

Before serving, add a squeeze of lemon juice.
Garnish with fried parsley and lemon wedges.

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).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,588 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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

Red herrings or yarmouth bloaters: Provides the main flesh and rich, smoky fish flavour that the dish is built around.
Fine bread crumbs: Form a crust on top that browns in the oven and helps keep the fish moist beneath.
Butter: Melts over the fish, adding richness and helping the crumbs brown.

“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.