Name: Skate with Brown Butter
Ingredients: 1 skate; 1 oz. fresh butter; 1 teaspoon vinegar; chopped parsley; sprigs of parsley for garnish

Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Skate with Brown Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the skate as directed in the recipe for boiled skate.
Serve the skate on a hot dish without a napkin.
In a small pan, heat the butter until it turns nut-brown.
Add the vinegar and chopped parsley to the browned butter.
Pour the hot butter mixture over the fish.
Garnish with sprigs of parsley and serve.

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.

Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,477 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,513 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).