Name: Another Fish and Sauce with White Sauce
Ingredients: fish (such as whitings or haddocks); ½ cup veal broth; 2 tablespoons minced parsley; 1 onion, chopped; sour beer or a mixture of vinegar and water; 2 egg yolks; 3 tablespoons cream

Why it works: Parsley and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Another Fish and Sauce with White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish as directed in the brown fish and sauce recipe, using veal broth instead of gravy soup.
Add minced parsley and chopped onion; omit catsup and soy, and do not brown the butter.
Soak the fish in sour beer or vinegar and water for 30 minutes.
Before serving, enrich the sauce by mixing in 2 beaten egg yolks and 3 tablespoons of cream, ensuring the sauce does not boil.

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 + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,841 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + beertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together830 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Veal + parsleytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,766 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,827 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 (fish, veal, onion, beer, egg, cream):

Garlicfits about as well
Capersfits about as well
Nutmegfits about as well
Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, veal, onion, beer, egg, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.