Name: Fish Salad
Ingredients: Cold fish, cut into 1-2 inch pieces; Coarse sea salt; Finely chopped onions; Juice of 1 lemon; Fresh lettuce, well drained; Salad sauce; Parsley leaves, for garnish; Small piece of red beet-root, for garnish

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 ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

In a deep dish, combine fish pieces with a little coarse sea salt and finely chopped onions.
Squeeze lemon juice over the fish, cover with a plate, and refrigerate for 2 hours.
Cut the drained lettuce into pieces and pile it high in the center of a serving dish.
Drain the fish from the lemon juice and arrange it in a circle around the lettuce.
Pour salad sauce over the lettuce, keeping the fish visible.
Garnish with parsley leaves and small pieces of red beet-root.

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).
Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,562 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, lemon, lettuce, sauce, parsley):

Shallotfits better
Spinachfits better
Horseradishfits better
Onionthe original

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