Name: Brown Fish Soup
Ingredients: any kind of fish, cut into small pieces; flour; olive oil or butter; hot water; salt; pepper; 1 clove of garlic (optional)

Why it works: Olive and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,665 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Brown Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Roll the fish pieces in flour.
Heat olive oil or butter in a saucepan and brown the fish.
Cover the fish with hot water.
Season with salt and pepper.
Boil slowly for about 15 minutes.
Ensure there is plenty of water in the saucepan.

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.

Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,665 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,090 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,368 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Olive + clovetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,866 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, flour, olive, pepper, garlic):

Capersfits better
Parsleyfits better
Turmericfits better
Clovethe original

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