Name: How to Boil Fish
Ingredients: whole fish (basse, mullet, perch, codlings, whiting); water; salt; sauce of choice (crab, lobster, shrimp, anchovy, soy, ketchup, cornubian sauce, chili, white wine vinegar, sliced cucumber, melted butter, fennel)

Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

How to Boil Fish

Ingredients

whole fish (basse, mullet, perch, codlings, whiting)
water
salt
sauce of choice (crab, lobster, shrimp, anchovy, soy, ketchup, cornubian sauce, chili, white wine vinegar, sliced cucumber, melted butter, fennel)

Directions

Fill a pot with water and add salt.
Bring the water to a boil.
Add the whole fish to the boiling water.
Boil the fish until cooked through.
Serve with your choice of sauce.

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.

Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,099 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Whiting + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together236 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Whiting + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together479 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).