Name: Broiled Smelts
Ingredients: smelts, split and boned; olive oil for greasing; mayonnaise or butter; 1 lemon, juiced; chopped parsley

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 Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Ask your fish merchant to split the smelts down the back and remove the bone.
Preheat your grill or broiler.
Grease the grill with olive oil.
Broil the smelts quickly, skin side down.
In a bowl, mix mayonnaise or butter with lemon juice and chopped parsley.
Once cooked, place the smelts on a hot dish and generously coat with the mixture.
Serve with Saratoga or Parisienne potatoes.

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).
Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,649 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,922 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Olive + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,887 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).