Name: Jerusalem Artichokes
Ingredients: Jerusalem artichokes; milk; water; various sauces (white and brown); butter; fried parsley

Why it works: Jerusalem artichoke and parsley share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 70 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Jerusalem Artichokes

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the Jerusalem artichokes thoroughly and peel them until smooth.
Boil the artichokes in a mixture of milk and water until soft, being careful not to overcook them.
Serve the artichokes with your choice of white or brown sauces, or fry them in butter.
Garnish with fried parsley before serving.

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.

Jerusalem artichoke + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together70 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Jerusalem artichoke + saucetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together97 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (jerusalem artichoke, milk, sauce, butter):

Capersfits better
Nutmegfits better
Parsleythe original
Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against jerusalem artichoke, milk, sauce, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.