Why it works: Parsley and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,483 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓
Anchovy Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Soak the anchovies for 20 minutes or longer, then wash, clean, and chop them finely.
Add several finely chopped yolks of hard boiled eggs and parsley if desired.
Cream the sweet butter and mix it with the chopped fish and eggs.
Spread the mixture on stale slices of bread.
Serve with lettuce or celery and additional hard boiled eggs.
Optionally, mix the anchovy butter with mayonnaise dressing and serve in halved egg shells.
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.
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Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,483 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together28,563 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Bread + lettucetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together602 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the parsley
The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, bread, lettuce):
- Capersfits better
- Tarragonfits about as well
- Parsleythe original
- Nutmegfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, bread, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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