Name: Parsley, Lemon, Eggs
Ingredients: Curled parsley; 1 lemon; 4 eggs

Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Parsley, Lemon, Eggs

Ingredients

Curled parsley
1 lemon
4 eggs

Directions

Prepare

Slice the lemon.
Boil the eggs until hard, then cool and peel them.
Cut the boiled eggs into various shapes.

Arrange and serve

Arrange the parsley, lemon slices, and egg pieces on a serving platter.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together44,316 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Provide the main protein and the boiled, firm pieces that form the dish's body.
Lemon: Adds bright acidity and fresh aroma that cut through the rich egg.
Curled parsley: Adds fresh, green aroma and a decorative contrast to the eggs and lemon.

“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.