Name: Cheap Fish Soups
Ingredients: conger eel (or any common fish); vegetables (e.g., onions, carrots); herbs (e.g., parsley); rice; rice flour; coarse sea salt; pepper; anchovy sauce (optional); prawns or shrimps (optional)

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cheap Fish Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the skin from the conger eel and slice it into thick cutlets.
Stew the fish with vegetables and herbs in water until cooked.
Strain the soup and let it settle.
Reheat the soup and add rice and minced parsley, or thicken with rice flour.
For added flavor, include flakes of cold salmon, cod, or other seafood.
Simmer gently for a few minutes before serving.

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.

Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 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).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,477 recipes

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

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, carrot, parsley, rice, flour, pepper, anchovy):

Turnipfits better
Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, carrot, parsley, rice, flour, pepper, anchovy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.