Name: To Fry Codlings and Small Haddocks
Ingredients: Codlings or small haddocks; Flour; Butter; Fried parsley; Anchovy sauce

Why it works: Haddock and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Fry Codlings and Small Haddocks

Ingredients

Directions

Clean the fish thoroughly and open them by the back, leaving the belly intact.
Remove the insides and cleanse the back bone.
Coat the fish in flour and dry them.
Fry the fish until they are a fine pale brown.
Garnish with fried parsley and serve with melted butter and anchovy 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.

Haddock + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together200 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Haddock + anchovytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together75 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, flour, butter, anchovy, sauce):

Capersfits better
Parsleythe original
Nutmegfits about as well
Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, flour, butter, anchovy, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.