Name: Broiled Salt Fish
Ingredients: Salt fish; Butter; Boiling water

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 ↓

Broiled Salt Fish

Ingredients

Salt fish
Butter
Boiling water

Directions

Prepare the fish

Cut a square from the thickest part of the fish.
Remove the skin and wash the fish clean.

Broil and serve

Broil the fish over clear coals for ten minutes.
Dip the broiled fish in boiling water and butter before serving.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt fish: Is the main ingredient, providing the dish's savoury, salty flavour and firm texture.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture to the fish when dipped after broiling.

“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.