Name: Tunny Fish
Ingredients: Tunny fish; Chopped capers; Chopped parsley; Sweet oil

Why it works: Capers and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tunny Fish

Ingredients

Tunny fish
Chopped capers
Chopped parsley
Sweet oil

Directions

Cut the tunny fish into slices.
Arrange the slices on a glass dish in overlapping rows.
Decorate the sides with small heaps of chopped capers and chopped parsley.
Drizzle a little sweet oil over the fish just before serving.

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.

Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Fish + caperstop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together165 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Fish + parsleytop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,341 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).