Name: Anchovy Salad with Onions
Ingredients: anchovies; vinegar; hard-boiled eggs; parsley; button onions; French capers; pickled beetroot; sweet oil

Why it works: Capers and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 231 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Anchovy Salad with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the anchovies and steep them in vinegar.
Drain the anchovies on a cloth and remove the bones.
Cut the fillets into small strips and arrange them on small glass dishes.
Garnish with groups of chopped hard-boiled egg whites, egg yolks, parsley, button onions, French capers, and pickled beetroot.
Drizzle a little sweet oil over the salad and serve.

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.

Capers + beetroottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together231 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + beetroottop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together745 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,381 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + beetroottop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,261 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, egg, parsley, capers, beetroot):

Shallotfits better
Horseradishfits better
Lettucefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, parsley, capers, beetroot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.