Name: To Bake Smelts
Ingredients: smelts; forcemeat; bread crumbs; clarified butter; Madeira wine; anchovy essence

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 ↓

To Bake Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the smelts by cleaning and scaling them.
Strew forcemeat and bread crumbs over the smelts.
Moisten with clarified butter.
Mix a glass of Madeira wine with a dash of anchovy essence and add it to the gravy before laying the smelts in.
Bake for 10 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).
Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,260 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).
Smelt + anchovytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,697 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Smelt + breadtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together150 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).