Name: Dry Salt-fish Burta
Ingredients: salt-fish; onions; green chillies; lime juice; 1 teaspoon mustard oil

Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dry Salt-fish Burta

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare onions, green chillies, and lime juice.
Broil or roast the salt-fish well.
Remove all bones and pound the fish to almost a powder.
Mix the fish thoroughly with mustard oil, onions, chillies, and lime juice.

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.

Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lime + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together392 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Onion + limetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,263 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Fish + oniontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Fish + mustardtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together238 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).