Name: Anchovy Fillets
Ingredients: anchovies, halved; oil; chopped parsley; hard-boiled egg (white and yolk); capers

Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Anchovy Fillets

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate halved anchovies in oil.
Cut each halved anchovy into 2 or 3 fillets.
Arrange fillets in a lattice pattern on a serving dish.
Garnish with chopped parsley and alternating colors of chopped egg white and yolk.
Add a few capers on top and drizzle with oil.

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.

Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,765 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Egg + caperstop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,311 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).