Name: Fish a LA Perfection
Ingredients: bass or trout; salt-pork or bacon; generous slice of bread; fine coffee; butter; pepper; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Bread and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,145 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: egg

Directions

Catch bass or trout and prepare it with salt-pork or bacon.
Serve on a generous slice of bread.
Accompany with a cup of fine coffee.
For frying, clean, wash, and dry the fish thoroughly.
Dip in beaten egg, then coat with fine bread crumbs, flour, or meal.
Fry in boiling lard until light brown and serve hot.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Bread + buttertop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,145 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pork + breadtop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together4,342 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Pork + buttertop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together13,848 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Pork + coffeetop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together219 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Pork + peppertop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together22,067 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).