Name: Macaroni with Fish or Meat
Ingredients: 2 cups cooked macaroni; 2 cups cooked fish or finely minced meat; 1 cup rich gravy; ½ cup bread crumbs

Why it works: Fish and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,668 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Macaroni with Fish or Meat

Ingredients

2 cups cooked macaroni
2 cups cooked fish or finely minced meat
1 cup rich gravy
½ cup bread crumbs

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Boil the macaroni until tender.

Assemble and bake

In a baking dish, layer the cooked fish or minced meat and macaroni alternately.
Pour the rich gravy over the layers.
Sprinkle bread crumbs on top.
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until heated through.

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 + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,668 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni: Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it a soft, starchy body between the layers.
Fish or finely minced meat: Provides the savory protein filling that is layered through the macaroni.
Rich gravy: Adds moisture and flavor so the layers do not dry out during baking.
Bread crumbs: Forms a top layer that browns and crisps in the oven.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.