Name: Boiled Salmon
Ingredients: 1 piece salmon; coarse sea salt; horseradish; shrimp sauce; lobster sauce; anchovy sauce; fennel; butter

Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Boiled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Clean and scrape the salmon carefully.
Boil it gently in water with salt and horseradish for about 30 minutes.
Serve with shrimp, lobster, or anchovy sauce in one dish, and fennel and butter in another.

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 + anchovytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together470 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Sauce + lobstertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Horseradish + fenneltop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together26 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Shrimp + lobstertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together403 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

Swap the fennel

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, horseradish, shrimp, sauce, lobster, anchovy, butter):

Capersfits better
Garlicfits better
Tarragonfits better
Fennelthe original

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