Name: Salmon and Caper Sauce
Ingredients: 2 slices of salmon; ½ cup butter; ½ teaspoon chopped parsley; 1 shallot; salt to taste; pepper to taste; grated nutmeg to taste

Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Salmon and Caper Sauce

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.

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
Lay the salmon in a baking dish.
Place pieces of butter over the salmon.
Add chopped parsley, shallot, salt, pepper, and nutmeg, rubbing some seasoning into the fish.
Baste the salmon frequently while it cooks.
Once done, remove the salmon and let it drain for a minute or two.
Transfer the salmon to a serving dish and pour caper sauce over it 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.

Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,019 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, parsley, shallot, pepper):

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Thymefits better
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, parsley, shallot, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.