Name: A Souties of Salmon, with Capers
Ingredients: thin slices of split salmon; butter; chopped parsley; shallot; mushrooms; pepper; salt; coulis; chopped capers

Why it works: Shallot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Souties of Salmon, with Capers

Ingredients

Directions

Butter a sauté pan and sprinkle it with chopped parsley, shallot, mushrooms, pepper, and salt.
Set the pan on the stove for about five minutes.
After three minutes, turn the salmon and let it cook for the same amount of time.
Remove the salmon and place it around the dish.
Scrape the herbs into a saucepan, add a little coulis and chopped capers, and bring to a boil.
Pour the sauce in the middle of the dish with the salmon.

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.

Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together405 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,982 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 (salmon, butter, shallot, mushroom, pepper, capers):

Parsleythe original
Tarragonfits about as well
Thymefits about as well
Dillfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, shallot, mushroom, pepper, capers. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.