Name: Smoked Cod's Roe Croutons
Ingredients: cod's roe; butter; fried bread; white pepper; cayenne pepper; juice of ½ lemon; 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 ↓

Smoked Cod's Roe Croutons

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the cod's roe in water for a few hours.
Wipe and dry the roe, then cut it into slices.
Broil the slices lightly in butter.
Prepare rounds of fried bread.
Place the slices of roe on the fried bread.
Sprinkle with white pepper, cayenne, and lemon juice.
Garnish with 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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Roe + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together442 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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 (roe, butter, bread, pepper, lemon, parsley):

Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Sagefits better
White pepperthe original

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