Name: Braise Maigrefor Boiling Fish
Ingredients: vegetable soup (juice of white peas); 1 tablespoon butter; 1 teaspoon thyme; 1 teaspoon sweet basil; 1 clove garlic; 1 tablespoon parsley

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Braise Maigrefor Boiling Fish

Ingredients

Directions

In a pot, add a sufficient quantity of vegetable soup.
Stir in the butter, thyme, sweet basil, garlic, and parsley.
Bring to a simmer and use this mixture to braise the fish.

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.

Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,768 recipes

Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).
Basil + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,351 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,108 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Basil + garlictop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,805 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, thyme, basil, clove, garlic, parsley):

Chickpeafits better
Lentilsfits better
Cashew nutfits better
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, thyme, basil, clove, garlic, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.