Name: Whiting
Ingredients: whiting fish; egg; breadcrumbs; parsley; anchovy sauce; shrimp sauce; egg sauce

Why it works: Whiting and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 236 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Whiting

Ingredients

Directions

Skin the whiting fish.
Pass the tail through the eyeholes, except for broiling.
Cover the fish with egg and breadcrumbs.
Fry the fish until golden brown.
Serve with parsley, anchovy sauce, shrimp sauce, or 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.

Whiting + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together236 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Whiting + anchovytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together82 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together637 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Anchovy + shrimptop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together440 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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 (whiting, fish, egg, anchovy, sauce, shrimp):

Capersfits better
Parsleythe original
Garlicfits less well
Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, fish, egg, anchovy, sauce, shrimp. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.