Name: Sardines on Toast
Ingredients: 1 box sardines; 4 slices bread; ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese; lemon for garnish; parsley for garnish

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 ↓

Sardines on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Drain the oil from the sardines and place them on brown paper to remove excess oil.
Cut the bread into thin slices, slightly larger than the sardines.
Toast the bread slices until golden brown.

Assemble and bake

Place one sardine on each slice of toast.
Sprinkle lightly with grated Parmesan cheese.
Heat in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until hot.

Serve

Garnish with lemon and parsley before serving.

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).
Bread + parmesan cheesetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together577 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,588 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,445 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Parmesan cheese + lemontop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,232 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines: Provide the main savory, oily flavour and protein of the dish.
Bread: Forms the crisp base that holds the sardines and absorbs their oil.
Parmesan cheese: Adds salty, savoury flavour and browns lightly in the oven.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.