Name: Wine Sauce
Ingredients: whitings; bread-crumbs; seasoning; grated nutmeg; minced parsley; mushrooms; butter; wine; lemon

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 ↓

Wine Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Scale, empty, wash, and thoroughly dry the whitings, preserving the livers.
Lay the fish in a dish, sprinkle with bread-crumbs, seasoning, nutmeg, parsley, and mushrooms.
Place small pieces of butter over the fish and moisten with wine.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 minutes.
If the sauce is too much, reduce it by boiling for a few minutes and pour under the fish.
Serve with a cut lemon and no other 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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).
Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, bread, parsley, mushroom, butter, wine, lemon):

Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Capersfits better
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, bread, parsley, mushroom, butter, wine, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.