Name: Fish Stuffing
Ingredients: 2 cups bread crumbs; 2 cups cracker crumbs; 1 teaspoon salt; White pepper to taste; Dash of cayenne pepper; 1 teaspoon onion juice or 2 teaspoons minced onion; 2 teaspoons finely chopped parsley; ¼ cup water; 1 well beaten egg

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 ↓

Fish Stuffing

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the bread crumbs and cracker crumbs in a bowl.
Add salt, white pepper, cayenne pepper, onion juice or minced onion, and parsley.
Stir in water and the beaten egg until well combined.
Adjust the liquid for desired consistency; omit the egg if preferred.

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).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,451 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs: Form the bulk of the stuffing and absorb liquid to give it body.
Cracker crumbs: Add dry bulk and a finer crumb that helps the stuffing hold together.
Egg: Binds the crumbs together so the stuffing holds its shape.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, onion, parsley, egg):

Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Garlicfits better
White pepperthe original

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

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.