Name: Smoked Fish Fritters
Ingredients: smoked fish (bloater, haddock, salmon, or kippered herring); white pepper; cayenne pepper; frying batter; fat or butter for frying; fried parsley for garnish

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Smoked Fish Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Remove skin and bones from the smoked fish and cut it into nice pieces.
Season the fish with white pepper and cayenne pepper.
Dip the fish pieces in the prepared frying batter.
Fry in hot fat or butter until crisp.
Drain well on a cloth.
Dish up on a folded napkin, garnish with fried parsley, 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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,451 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
White pepper + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,478 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (smoked fish, pepper, butter, parsley):

Thymefits better
Tarragonfits better
Dillfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against smoked fish, pepper, butter, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.