Name: Baked Whitings, with Fine-Herbs
Ingredients: whitings; fine herbs (such as parsley, thyme, and chives); butter; salt; pepper

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Baked Whitings, with Fine-Herbs

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Clean the whitings and place them in a baking dish.
Melt butter and mix with finely chopped herbs, salt, and pepper.
Pour the herb butter over the fish.
Bake for 20-25 minutes until the fish is cooked through and flaky.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,150 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Thyme + chivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together580 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Swap the chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, parsley, thyme, butter, pepper):

Shallotfits better
Carrotfits better
Chivethe original
Potatofits about as well

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