Name: Boiled Bass
Ingredients: enough water for the fish to swim in; ½ cup vinegar; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 onion; 12 black peppercorns; 1 blade of mace; 1 cup drawn butter; juice of ½ lemon; sliced lemon for garnish

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 ↓

Boiled Bass

Ingredients

Directions

Fill a pot with enough water for the fish to swim easily.
Add vinegar, salt, onion, black peppercorns, and mace.
Sew the fish in a piece of clean net, shaped to fit it.
Heat the pot slowly for the first 30 minutes.
Boil the fish for at least 8 minutes per pound at a fast boil.
Unwrap the fish and pour over it drawn butter made from the boiling liquid, mixed with lemon juice.
Garnish with sliced lemon.

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).
Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,226 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,889 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, vinegar, onion, butter, lemon):

Tarragonfits better
Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, vinegar, onion, butter, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.