Name: Smoked Conger Eels
Ingredients: 1 fish (5 to 6 pounds); 1 lb common salt (or rock salt), finely pounded; 1 lb coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'), powdered; 1 lb coarse sugar; 2 oz white pepper, ground

Why it works: Fish and white pepper work together. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 191 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Smoked Conger Eels

Ingredients

1 fish (5 to 6 pounds)
1 lb common salt (or rock salt), finely pounded
1 lb coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'), powdered
1 lb coarse sugar
2 oz white pepper, ground

Directions

Ask your fishmonger to send the conger eel without skins, heads, and tails.
Cut off all fins close to the body using large scissors.
Open the belly from three inches below the vent to the head and clean out all the insides.
Remove the membrane covering the backbone and any clotted blood.
Cut the fish into pieces 8 to 9 inches long and wash quickly in strong saltwater, then dry with cloths.
Rub each piece inside and outside with the salt, bay salt, sugar, and white pepper mixture.
Place the pieces in a deep pan, rubbing and turning them daily for four days.
After four days, take them up, wipe them dry, and stretch out the sides with wooden splints.

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.

Fish + white peppertop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together191 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Sugar + white peppertop 42% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together812 recipes
Fish + sugartop 42% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together207 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).