Name: Boiled Bass
Ingredients: 1 bass, cleaned; 2 tablespoons coarse sea salt; water, enough to cover the fish; 6 hard-boiled eggs; sauce of your choice

Why it works: Fish and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,487 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Boiled Bass

Ingredients

Directions

Place the cleaned bass in a saucepan and cover it with water.
Add 2 tablespoons of coarse sea salt.
Bring the water to a boil and cook for about 5 minutes.
Check if a fin pulls out easily; if so, carefully remove the fish from the water.
Lay the fish on a platter and surround it with 6 hard-boiled eggs.
Serve with your choice of sauce.

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 + saucetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,487 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,782 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + saucetop 39% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,895 recipes

Egg and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 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

Bass: Is the main protein that cooks gently in the simmering water until flaky.
Hard-boiled eggs: Are served alongside the fish as a mild, rich accompaniment to its flavor.

“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.