Name: Scalloped Fish
Ingredients: cooked fish, flaked; fine bread crumbs; drawn butter; coarse sea salt; butter for topping

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 ↓

Scalloped Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Layer the dish

In a deep dish, layer fine bread crumbs at the bottom.
Add a layer of flaked cooked fish and drizzle with drawn butter.
Repeat layering with bread crumbs and fish until the dish is full.
Ensure the top layer is bread crumbs and scatter small lumps of butter on top.

Bake

Bake for 30 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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).
Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,668 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Fish + buttertop 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

Cooked fish: Forms the main body of the dish and gives its flavour.
Fine bread crumbs: Absorb the butter and add bulk, giving the layers a soft, structured texture.
Drawn butter: Adds moisture and richness, helping the crumbs brown and keeping the fish from drying out.
Butter for topping: Melts over the surface, adding moisture and promoting browning on top.

“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.