Name: Fish Toast
Ingredients: 6 slices of bread; 1 pint of cold cooked fish, freed from skin and bone; 1½ cups of milk; 4 tablespoons of butter; 2 tablespoons of flour; a dash of red pepper or paprika; 1½ teaspoons of salt; 1 teaspoon of lemon juice

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fish Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Toast the bread slices.
In a double boiler, scald ¾ cup of milk.
Melt the butter, then add the flour, salt, and pepper; cook for 5 minutes without burning.
Slowly pour in the scalded milk, stirring until free from lumps.
Transfer the mixture to the double boiler, add the fish, and cook for 10 minutes.
Beat the eggs until light and mix in the remaining cold milk.
Add this mixture to the double boiler, stir well, and remove from heat.
Stir in the lemon juice and spread the fish mixture on the hot buttered toast. 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Bread + fishtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,668 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, fish, milk, butter, flour, pepper):

Lemonthe original
Coconutfits about as well
Figfits less well
Plumfits less well

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