Name: Fish Toast
Ingredients: leftover fish; 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; 2 tablespoons chopped onion; ¼ cup cream; slices of very hot toast; bread crumbs

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 Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fish paste

Pound the leftover fish with butter, pepper, salt, parsley, onion, and enough cream to make a paste.
Heat the mixture briefly.

Serve

Spread it on the hot toast.
Sprinkle with bread crumbs and serve.

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).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,668 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Leftover fish: Forms the main body of the paste, providing savoury flavour and substance.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, helping the paste feel smooth and spreadable.
Cream: Adds moisture so the fish and butter bind into a spreadable paste.

Swap the onion

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

Potatofits better
Leekfits about as well
Shallotfits about as well
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, pepper, parsley, cream, bread. 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.