Name: Raw Oysters
Ingredients: fresh oysters; crushed ice; parsley or cress; lemon; grated horseradish; Tabasco sauce

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 ↓

Raw Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the oysters from their shells.
Chill the shells by placing them in crushed ice on a plate.
Alternatively, create a hollow in a cake of ice using a hot iron and place the shells in it.
Garnish the plates with parsley or cress.
Serve with lemon sections, grated horseradish, and Tabasco 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 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).
Lemon + horseradishtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,155 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Horseradish + saucetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together775 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Oyster + horseradishtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together282 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, parsley, horseradish, sauce):

Lemonthe original
Limefits about as well
Avocadofits less well
Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, parsley, horseradish, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.