Name: Scotch Fish
Ingredients: fish; brown sugar; pepper; coarse sea salt; butter; egg; parsley; bread crumbs

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Scotch Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the flesh from one side of the fish.
Slip a knife under the other side and raise it, leaving the flesh on the board.
Cut the fish into serving pieces.
Sprinkle brown sugar, pepper, and coarse sea salt over the fish and set aside to firm up.
Roll the fish in egg, then in parsley and bread crumbs.
Fry the fish in butter until golden brown.
Garnish with parsley.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,668 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, sugar, pepper, butter, egg, bread):

Nutmegfits about as well
Parsleythe original
Cinnamonfits about as well
Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, sugar, pepper, butter, egg, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.