Name: The Breakfast Book
Ingredients: inferior parts of fish; coarse sea salt; black pepper; fresh butter; flesh of 2 anchovies; pie crust

Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

The Breakfast Book

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Boil the inferior parts of the fish until it forms a jelly.
Strain the jelly and season it with plenty of black pepper and coarse sea salt.
Place the fish in a pie dish and add fresh butter and the flesh of the anchovies.
Pour the jelly over the fish and cover with a rim and lid of pie crust.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the crust is nicely browned.
If not serving immediately, you can re-bake it in a few days to maintain flavor.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,948 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).