Name: Boiled Fish
Ingredients: 1 onion; 3 whole cloves; 2 bay leaves; ½ lemon; water (enough to cover fish); 1 tablespoon flour; 3 or 4 egg yolks; 1 tablespoon butter; Juice of ½ lemon

Why it works: Clove and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Boiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

In a pot, combine onion, cloves, bay leaves, and enough water to cover the fish. Bring to a boil.
Add the fish and boil for 20 minutes, or 30 minutes if the fish is large.
For the sauce, combine flour, egg yolks, butter, and lemon juice in a double boiler.
Add enough water to the double boiler as needed. Stir until thick.
Pour the sauce over the boiled fish before serving.

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.

Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,150 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,901 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, lemon, fish, flour, egg, butter):

Shallotfits better
Leekfits better
Arrowrootfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, lemon, fish, flour, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.