Name: Baked Haddock
Ingredients: 1 roll, crumbed; ½ cup milk; 1 walnut-sized piece of butter; pepper; coarse sea salt; vinegar; butter for serving; parsley for serving; sharp egg sauce for serving

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 ↓

Baked Haddock

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the crumb of a roll in milk and squeeze it dry in a cloth.
In a saucepan, combine the dry crumb with a walnut-sized piece of butter.
Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Prepare a pot of water seasoned with pepper, salt, and vinegar, and bring it to a boil.
Place the herring in the boiling water and let it simmer gently for 10 minutes or until cooked.
Serve with butter, parsley, or sharp egg sauce.

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).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together865 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,039 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, pepper, vinegar, parsley, egg, sauce):

Walnutthe original
Beansfits about as well
Sesamefits about as well
Chickpeafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, pepper, vinegar, parsley, egg, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.