Name: Scalloped Fish
Ingredients: 1 pint milk; 2 slices onion, finely chopped; 1 sprig parsley, minced; 1 egg-sized piece of butter; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon white pepper; 2 tablespoons cornstarch or flour; Cracker or bread crumbs; Cold fresh fish or salt codfish, boned and minced

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Scalloped Fish

Ingredients

Directions

In a saucepan, heat 1 pint of milk over boiling water.
Add finely chopped onion, minced parsley, butter, salt, and white pepper.
Stir in cornstarch or flour mixed with a little cold milk and let it boil.
Butter the sides and bottom of a serving dish.
Layer minced fish, cream mixture, and cracker or bread crumbs in the dish.
Repeat layers until the dish is full, finishing with cracker or bread crumbs 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the white pepper

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

Capersfits better
Nutmegfits better
Thymefits better
White pepperthe original

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