Name: Broiled Shad Roe
Ingredients: shad roe; butter; coarse sea salt; black pepper; lemon juice; chopped parsley; lemon; watercress

Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Broiled Shad Roe

Ingredients

Directions

Wash and dry the shad roe.
Broil the roe slowly, keeping them moistened with butter to prevent the skin from breaking.
Alternatively, sauté the roe in butter until browned.
Cover the top with butter, pepper, salt, and a little lemon juice.
Sprinkle with chopped parsley.
Garnish with lemon and watercress, serving some watercress with each portion.
Serve with maitre d'hotel 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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together469 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together579 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).