Name: Baked Bluefish with Tomatoes
Ingredients: bluefish, cut into portions; salt; pepper; flour; butter; minced onions; tomato sauce; 1 can of tomatoes, strained from juice

Why it works: Bluefish and sauce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Bluefish with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Season the bluefish portions with salt and pepper.
Dredge the fish in flour.
Place the fish in a buttered baking pan.
Add minced onions, tomato sauce, and strained tomatoes to the pan.
Bake until done.
Serve with some of the tomatoes poured around the fish.

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.

Bluefish + saucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together19 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bluefish, pepper, flour, butter, onion, sauce):

Mustardfits about as well
Chivefits about as well
Horseradishfits about as well
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bluefish, pepper, flour, butter, onion, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.