Name: Curried Fish
Ingredients: fish cutlets; flour; coarse sea salt; black pepper; dripping (or cooking oil); rice

Why it works: Pepper and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Curried Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Skin and bone the fish, then cut it into cutlets.
Season the cutlets with flour, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.
Fry the cutlets slowly in dripping until cooked through.
Steam or boil the rice until tender.
Arrange the rice in heaps around the edge of a platter.
Place the fried fish cutlets in the center of the rice.
Pour prepared curry over the fish cutlets.

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.

Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,379 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Fish + ricetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together270 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour + ricetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,611 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,948 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).