Name: Sole Au Gratin
Ingredients: 1 sole; 1 sprig of parsley; 1 shallot; 6 mushrooms; butter

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

Sole Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

Cut off the fins and remove the skin from the sole.
Wash and dry the sole with a cloth.
Prick the sole with a knife on both sides.
Chop the parsley, shallot, and mushrooms finely.
Butter a baking tin and sprinkle half of the chopped ingredients over it.
Lay the sole in the tin and sprinkle the remaining ingredients on top.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together3,737 recipes

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

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together1,982 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together6,132 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together28,563 recipes

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

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

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

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

Capersbetter flavor fit
Thymebetter flavor fit
Tarragonabout as good a flavor fit
Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, mushroom, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).