Name: Boiled Fish
Ingredients: 1 whole fish; ½ cup flour; 1 tablespoon salt; 1 tablespoon vinegar; Drawn butter or milk gravy for serving

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 ↓

Boiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash and wipe the fish.
Dredge the fish with flour and wrap it in a cloth.
Place the wrapped fish in a deep pot and cover with cold water.
Add salt and vinegar to the water.

Cook and serve

Bring to a boil and cook for 15 minutes per pound.
Remove the cloth and serve with drawn butter or milk gravy.

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).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,513 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Fish + vinegartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,036 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,652 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour: Forms a light coating on the fish that helps hold it together while it cooks.
Vinegar: Adds a slight acidity to the cooking water, brightening the flavour of the fish.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.