Name: Stuffing for Fish
Ingredients: 2 cups bread crumbs; ½ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon white pepper; cayenne to taste; 1 teaspoon onion juice; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; 1 teaspoon capers or chopped pickle; ¾ cup melted butter

Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stuffing for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs, salt, white pepper, cayenne, onion juice, parsley, and capers or pickle.
Pour in the melted butter and mix well until combined.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,381 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,451 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, onion, parsley, capers, butter):

Thymefits better
Garlicfits better
Tarragonfits better
White pepperthe original

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