Name: Spanish Pickle
Ingredients: any sort of fish suitable for pickling (e.g., salmon, mackerel, red mullet, tunny fish); coarse sea salt; vinegar; spices (e.g., peppercorns, cloves, bay leaves)

Why it works: Fish and salmon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,078 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Spanish Pickle

Ingredients

any sort of fish suitable for pickling (e.g., salmon, mackerel, red mullet, tunny fish)
coarse sea salt
vinegar
spices (e.g., peppercorns, cloves, bay leaves)

Directions

Clean the fish thoroughly and cut it into thick slices.
Layer the fish in a container, sprinkling coarse sea salt between the layers.
Cover the fish with vinegar and add your choice of spices.
Seal the container and let it sit for several days to pickle.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + salmontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,078 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,386 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Fish + clovetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together615 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Fish + vinegartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,036 recipes

Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).
Salmon + vinegartop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,675 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).