Name: Trout in Green Sauce
Ingredients: 1 anchovy; 1 tablespoon capers; 1 tablespoon chives, minced; 1 tablespoon parsley, minced; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 tablespoon flour; Salt to taste; Trout, cooked and kept hot

Why it works: Capers and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Trout in Green Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

In a mortar, mash the anchovy, capers, chives, parsley, butter, and flour together.
Boil the mixture with the cooking liquid, keeping the trout hot.

Serve

Serve the trout in the sauce, adding salt to taste.

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.

Capers + chivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together245 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,150 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,024 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Anchovy + caperstop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together473 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovy: Adds a salty, savoury depth that underpins the green sauce.
Capers: Add a sharp, acidic bite that cuts through the rich butter.
Butter: Provides fat and a smooth, rich body to the sauce.
Flour: Thickens the butter and herb mixture as it boils into a sauce.
Parsley: Contributes fresh, green herbal flavour and colour to the sauce.
Chives: Add a mild oniony freshness and more green aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture with the cooking liquid. Once the flour is stirred in, boiling activates its starch so the sauce thickens. Boiling too briefly leaves it thin and floury, while the trout must stay hot without overcooking.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (anchovy, capers, chive, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against anchovy, capers, chive, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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Trout in Green Sauce