Name: Boiled Fish with Potato Balls
Ingredients: fresh fish; water; coarse sea salt; vinegar; potatoes

Why it works: Fish and potato work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 134 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Boiled Fish with Potato Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Select fresh fish and prepare salted and acidulated water by adding coarse sea salt and vinegar to boiling water.
Carefully place the fish in the boiling water and cook until done.
While the fish is cooking, peel and boil the potatoes until tender.
Mash the potatoes and form them into balls.
Serve the boiled fish with the potato balls.

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 + potatotop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together134 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Vinegar + potatotop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,608 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Fish + vinegartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,036 recipes

Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).