Name: Pickled Fish
Ingredients: fish; olive oil or butter; vinegar; pepper; cloves; cinnamon; allspice; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Skin the fish and pack it in a dish.
Cover the fish with olive oil or butter.
Spice with vinegar, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and coarse sea salt.
Scald the mixture and pour it over the fish.
Cover closely and bake until done.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, olive, vinegar, pepper, clove, allspice):

Thymefits better
Cinnamonthe original
Tarragonfits about as well
Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, olive, vinegar, pepper, clove, allspice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.