Name: Observations on Dressing Fish
Ingredients: small fish; 1 egg; bread crumbs; boiling lard or dripping; parsley; horseradish; lemon; melted butter

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 ↓

Observations on Dressing Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Clean the fish thoroughly, removing blood and scales.
Wash and dry the fish.
Dip the fish in beaten egg, then sprinkle with bread crumbs.
Fry the fish in boiling lard or dripping until light brown.
Garnish with parsley, horseradish, and lemon.
Serve with melted butter.

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 + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together562 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,155 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,668 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, egg, bread, parsley, lemon, butter):

Shallotfits better
Asparagusfits better
Leekfits better
Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, bread, parsley, lemon, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.