Name: To Bake Fish
Ingredients: white fish; eel; oysters; parsley; lemon peel; fish, veal, or vegetables (for stuffing); stock; white wine or butter; anchovy or other seasoning

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 ↓

To Bake Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Season the whole white fish and make incisions.
Lard the fish with eel, oysters, parsley, and lemon peel.
Stuff the fish with fish, veal, or vegetables.
Place the fish in a baking dish with stock and white wine or butter.
Baste the fish continually while baking.
Once cooked, pour off the sauce and thicken it to taste.
Add anchovy or other seasoning to the 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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together603 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together496 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together637 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,832 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, oyster, lemon, white wine, anchovy):

Parsleythe original
Capersfits about as well
Thymefits about as well
Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, oyster, lemon, white wine, anchovy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.