Name: Sole À LA Portugaise
Ingredients: 1 large Sole; 1 ounce Butter; 1 Shallot, finely chopped; ½ teaspoon Parsley, finely chopped; ½ teaspoon Anchovy sauce

Why it works: Anchovy and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,048 recipes mention both. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Skin the sole and make a large incision for stuffing.
In a bowl, mix the butter, shallot, parsley, and anchovy sauce.
Stuff the mixture into the sole.
Place the stuffed sole in a buttered gratin dish.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,048 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Shallot + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together3,718 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Shallot + anchovytop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together488 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Butter + anchovytop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together3,672 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Parsley + anchovytop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, shallot, anchovy, sauce):

Capersbetter flavor fit
Parsleythe original
Tarragonabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, shallot, anchovy, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).