Name: Kedgeree
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons rice; smoked fish (such as haddock); 2 hard-boiled eggs; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; salt to taste; black pepper to taste; lemon wedges for garnish

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Kedgeree

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

Boil the rice in salted water until tender, then drain.

Combine and serve

Flake the smoked fish and mix it with the rice.
Chop the hard-boiled eggs and add them to the mixture.
Melt the butter in a pan and stir in the rice and fish mixture.
Season with salt and black pepper, then garnish with parsley and serve with lemon wedges.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,762 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,379 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice: Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs flavour as the base of the mixture.
Smoked fish: Provides the main savoury, smoky flavour and flaky texture.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add richness and a soft, creamy texture through the rice and fish.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the rice.

“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.