Name: Fish-bread
Ingredients: boiled fish, bones removed; boiled potatoes, minced; salt; pepper; cumin, powdered; ginger, powdered; garam masala, powdered; butter; fried onions (optional)

Why it works: Cumin and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,733 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fish-bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Remove the bones from the boiled fish.
Mince an equal quantity of boiled potatoes.
Mix salt, pepper, cumin, ginger, and garam masala with the fish and potatoes separately.
Knead the fish mixture and form thin circular discs.
In a baking pan, layer the fish and potato discs alternately with some butter.
Cover and bake at 300°F (150°C) until heated through.
Top with fried onions for added flavor.

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.

Cumin + gingertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,733 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cumin + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,498 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + cumintop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,382 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Potato + cumintop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together972 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, potato, pepper, cumin, ginger, butter):

Capsicumfits better
Carrotfits better
Tomatofits about as well
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, potato, pepper, cumin, ginger, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.