Name: To Dress Fish
Ingredients: fish (cod, whiting, haddock, or flat fish); coarse sea salt; parsley; horseradish; dripping or hog's lard

Why it works: Parsley and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 562 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Dress Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Examine the fish to ensure it is properly cleaned.
If using cod, whiting, or haddock, salt the fish and let it sit for a day.
For fresh-water fish, soak in strong saltwater to remove muddy smell.
Boil water and add a little salt.
Place the fish in boiling water and cook until done, being careful not to break it.
Drain the fish and cut off the fins.
For broiling, flour the fish except for herrings, which should be scored.
For frying, dry the fish with a cloth, flour them, and heat plenty of dripping or hog's lard in a frying pan until boiling.
Fry the fish until golden and serve with parsley and scraped horseradish.

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 + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together562 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Fish + horseradishtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together178 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,341 recipes

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