Name: Fish and Sauce of Whitings, Haddocks, or Flat Fish [Scotch]
Ingredients: fish heads and fins; pepper; coarse sea salt; onions; chives; parsley; flour; butter

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish and Sauce of Whitings, Haddocks, or Flat Fish [Scotch]

Ingredients

Directions

Make a sauce with the fish heads and fins, adding pepper, salt, onions, chives, and parsley.
Strain the sauce and let it cool.
If the fish are large, cut them into chunks and roll them in flour.
Add the fish to the sauce, sprinkle with a little flour, and add pieces of butter and sprigs of parsley.
Cover the pan tightly and shake gently while cooking for 5 to 15 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish.
Serve the fish with plenty of sauce, ensuring it is not thicker than soup.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,150 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,907 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Chive + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,168 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, chive, parsley, flour, butter):

Shallotfits better
Leekfits better
Potatofits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, chive, parsley, flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.