Name: Char, a LA Genoise
Ingredients: 1 char fish; coarse sea salt; Genoise sauce (No. 30); small quenelles of whiting; crayfish tails

Why it works: Sauce and whiting match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 236 recipes mention both. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

Directions

Boil the char in salted water until cooked.
Remove the skin and glaze the fish.
Plate the fish and sauce with Genoise sauce.
Garnish with small quenelles of whiting and crayfish tails.
Serve immediately.

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.

Sauce + whitingtop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together236 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Fish + crayfishtop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together90 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Whiting + crayfishtop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together30 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + crayfishtop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together195 recipes

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

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together313 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).