Name: Stuffing for Fish
Ingredients: 2 cups bread crumbs; ½ teaspoon salt; ⅛ teaspoon white pepper; 1 teaspoon onion juice; 1 teaspoon minced parsley; 1 teaspoon capers or chopped pickle; ¼ cup melted butter

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 ↓

Stuffing for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs, salt, white pepper, onion juice, minced parsley, and capers or chopped pickle.
Pour in the melted butter and mix well until combined.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,381 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,451 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

Bread crumbs: Form the bulk of the stuffing and absorb liquid to give it body.
Melted butter: Adds fat and moisture, coating the crumbs and keeping the stuffing tender and rich.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, onion, parsley, capers, butter):

Thymefits better
Garlicfits better
Tarragonfits better
White pepperthe original

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

“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.