Name: To Dress Fish a Second Time
Ingredients: 4 tablespoons bread crumbs; 2 eggs; 2 ounces butter; 1 teaspoon essence of anchovy; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; coarse sea salt to taste; cold boiled fish

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 Dress Fish a Second Time

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Remove the bones from the cold boiled fish.
In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs, eggs, butter, essence of anchovy, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and salt, then mix well with the fish.

Cook

Steam the mixture until heated through.

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).
Anchovy + fishtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together637 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Bread + fishtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,668 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,260 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).
Butter + fishtop 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

Eggs: Bind the crumbs and fish together so the mixture holds its shape.
Bread crumbs: Add body and absorb moisture, giving the mixture a soft, cohesive texture.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture, keeping the mixture from drying out during steaming.
Essence of anchovy: Adds a salty, savoury depth of flavour to the fish.

“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.