Name: Whiting Aux Fines Herbes
Ingredients: 1 whole whiting fish; coarse sea salt; black pepper; 1 teaspoon mixed herbs; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; small pieces of butter; lemon for serving

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,037 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Whiting Aux Fines Herbes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Place the prepared fish in a fireproof dish.
Sprinkle salt, pepper, mixed herbs, and parsley over the fish.
Dot the fish with small pieces of butter.

Bake and serve

Cover the dish with another dish and bake for 25 minutes.
Serve the fish in the dish it was cooked in, with shrimp, anchovy, or plain butter sauce.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Whiting fish: Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the covered dish.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture as it melts over the fish during baking.
Mixed herbs: Adds aroma and fresh flavor to the fish.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.