Name: For Fried Fish
Ingredients: Double-curled parsley, well dried; Boiling fat for frying; Croutons of bread; Tiny potato balls; Rice balls; Sliced lemons; Small bright tomatoes; Slices of hard-boiled egg

Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

For Fried Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the gills from the fish and prepare for frying.
Fry the dried parsley in boiling fat for 1 minute until crisp.
Use croutons, potato balls, rice balls, sliced lemons, tomatoes, and hard-boiled egg for garnishing.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,798 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together851 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, bread, potato, rice, tomato, egg):

Lemonthe original
Avocadofits about as well
Cherryfits less well
Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, bread, potato, rice, tomato, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.