Name: Creamed Salt Fish
Ingredients: salt fish; water; white sauce; toast; sweet potatoes or white potatoes

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 ↓

Creamed Salt Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the salt fish in boiling water until tender, changing the water once.
Remove the fish from the water and break it into small pieces.
Mix the fish with a white sauce.
Serve on toast or on a platter garnished with broiled sweet or white potatoes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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).
Sauce + sweet potatotop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together165 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Fish + sweet potatotop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).