Name: Water Souciiet of Crimped Salmon
Ingredients: fresh salmon, sliced ½ inch thick; boiled parsley roots; water from boiled parsley roots; picked parsley leaves; minionette pepper; coarse sea salt; essence of fish

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 34,122 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Water Souciiet of Crimped Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Keep the salmon slices in cold spring water for a couple of hours to firm them up.
Place the salmon in a stewpan with boiled parsley roots and their water.
Add picked parsley leaves, minionette pepper, and coarse sea salt to season.
Moisten with essence of fish made from inferior salmon pieces or flounders.
Bring the mixture to a boil.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Salmon + fishtop 11% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together1,078 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Parsley + fishtop 18% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together2,341 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + fishtop 21% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together3,948 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Salmon + parsleytop 24% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together2,516 recipes

Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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 (salmon, pepper, fish):

Capersabout as good a flavor fit
Parsleythe original
Dillabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, pepper, fish. 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).