Name: Scalloped Cod
Ingredients: cold cod fish, flaked; gelatine; sauce or melted butter; coarse sea salt; red pepper; mace; fine bread crumbs; butter

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Scalloped Cod

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Butter an earthenware pudding dish.
Layer neat flakes of cold cod fish and any leftover gelatine in the dish.
Pour sauce or melted butter over the fish.
Sprinkle with coarse sea salt, a little red pepper, and a pinch of mace.
Add alternate layers of fish and sauce until the dish is full.
Cover the top with fine bread crumbs and dot with bits of butter.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for twenty minutes.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,668 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, sauce, pepper, bread, butter):

Capersfits better
Parsleyfits better
Tarragonfits better
Macethe original

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