Name: To Boil Fish
Ingredients: fish (except salmon); salt; cold water; vinegar or lemon juice; onion (optional); parsley (optional); carrots (optional); cloves (optional)

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Boil Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Place the fish in a fish kettle with salted cold water.
Add a little vinegar or lemon juice.
Boil gently to avoid breaking the fish.
Remove the fish from the water as soon as it is thoroughly cooked and drain it before the fire.
Add onion, parsley, carrots, or cloves for extra flavor and appearance if desired.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,873 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,768 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, salmon, vinegar, parsley, carrot, clove):

Shallotfits better
Cucumberfits better
Parsnipfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, salmon, vinegar, parsley, carrot, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.