Name: Broiled Sardine Canapes
Ingredients: 6 pieces of toast, oblong and the size of boneless sardines; 12 boneless sardines; Lemon juice, to taste; Lemon, for garnish; Parsley, 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 ↓

Broiled Sardine Canapes

Ingredients

6 pieces of toast, oblong and the size of boneless sardines
12 boneless sardines
Lemon juice, to taste
Lemon, for garnish
Parsley, for garnish

Directions

Prepare

Broil 12 sardines until cooked through.
Squeeze lemon juice over the sardines.

Assemble and serve

Place 2 sardines on each piece of toast.
Garnish with small pieces of lemon and parsley.
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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines: Provide the main protein and rich, savory flavor that defines the canapés.
Toast: Provides a crisp base that holds the sardines and keeps the bite from going soggy.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the oily flavor of the sardines.

The step that matters

Broil the sardines until cooked through. Sardines are small and cook quickly under high heat. Watch them closely, since overcooking dries the flesh and turns it tough, while undercooking leaves it unsafe to eat.

“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.

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Broiled Sardine Canapes