Name: How to Stew Fish
Ingredients: Soles; Small Turbots; Flat Fish; 2 anchovies or 1 teaspoon anchovy sauce; sliced lemon

Why it works: Turbot and anchovy match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 110 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

How to Stew Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Skin and prepare the fish.
Fry the fish until half cooked.
Stew the fish with anchovies or anchovy sauce.
Cut larger fish into two or three pieces before cooking.
Serve with gravy poured over the fish and garnish with sliced lemon.

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.

Turbot + anchovytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together110 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together637 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Turbot + fishtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together153 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).
Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,889 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Anchovy + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,080 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).