Name: Grayling, Baked
Ingredients: 1 grayling fish, washed, scaled, and emptied; Coarse sea salt, to taste; Cayenne pepper, to taste; 3-4 tablespoons butter; Good melted butter, 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 ↓

Grayling, Baked

Ingredients

1 grayling fish, washed, scaled, and emptied
Coarse sea salt, to taste
Cayenne pepper, to taste
3-4 tablespoons butter
Good melted butter, for serving

Directions

Prepare

Dry the fish and season it with coarse sea salt and cayenne pepper.
Place the fish in a shallow baking dish and add lumps of butter on top.

Bake and serve

Baste the fish occasionally and cover the dish while cooking.
Cook for about 30 minutes.
Serve with sauce made from the fish's gravy mixed with melted butter.

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).
Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,948 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Grayling fish: Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently in its own juices and butter.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture, basting the fish and blending with its gravy into the sauce.

“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.