Name: Roasted Oysters
Ingredients: large oysters; coarse sea salt; black pepper; chopped parsley; butter; watercress; brown bread

Why it works: Parsley and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 469 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Roasted Oysters

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.

Scrub the oysters thoroughly.
Place them in a large tin with the round side of the shells down.
Roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven until they open.
Remove the upper shell as soon as they open.
Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and chopped parsley.
Add a little butter and serve hot on a bed of watercress.

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 + watercresstop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together469 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together983 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, pepper, butter, watercress, bread):

Capersfits about as well
Parsleythe original
Tarragonfits less well
Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper, butter, watercress, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.