Name: Fish Salad
Ingredients: cold fish; pickled gherkins; green pickle; oysters; shrimps; salad cream; lemon slices; 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 ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Flake the cold fish into small pieces.
Mix the fish with pickled gherkins and any other green pickles.
Add oysters and shrimps if desired.
Moisten the mixture with salad cream.
Garnish with lemon slices and parsley.

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).
Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together496 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Oyster + shrimptop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together531 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Fish + shrimptop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together252 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,889 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 (fish, oyster, shrimp, cream, lemon):

Capersfits about as well
Celeryfits about as well
Parsleythe original
Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, oyster, shrimp, cream, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.