Name: Baked Codfish
Ingredients: 2 bowls mashed potatoes; 1 bowl picked codfish; butter to taste

Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Codfish

Ingredients

2 bowls mashed potatoes
1 bowl picked codfish
butter to taste

Directions

Prepare

Freshen the codfish before using.
Combine the mashed potatoes and picked codfish in a bowl. Add butter to taste and mix well.

Bake and serve

Transfer the mixture to a baking dish and bake until heated through.

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.

Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes: Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it a soft, creamy texture.
Codfish: Provides the main protein and a flaky texture in the mixture.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture to the mixture.

“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.