Name: Cream Sauce for White Fish
Ingredients: 95 ml milk; 1 pint thin cream; ½ cup strong fish stock; salt to taste; a few drops cayenne essence or chili vinegar; a few drops tarragon vinegar; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; 1 teaspoon chopped chervil

Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cream Sauce for White Fish

Ingredients

Directions

In a saucepan, combine milk and a paste until smooth.
Add thin cream and fish stock; stir until it boils.
Season with salt, cayenne essence, tarragon vinegar, parsley, and chervil off the heat.
Serve with white fish or salmon.

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.

Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together824 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,563 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Parsley + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together774 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,547 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + fishtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,432 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cream, fish, vinegar, tarragon, chervil):

Capersfits better
Parsleythe original
Marjoramfits about as well
Dillfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, fish, vinegar, tarragon, chervil. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.