Name: Fish Pudding
Ingredients: 2 lbs haddock; 6 medium potatoes; 2 oz butter; 1 egg; 2 oz butter (for sauce); 1 oz flour; ½ cup cream; 2 eggs (for sauce); coarse sea salt (to taste)

Why it works: Haddock and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fish Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Fill a fish kettle with warm water and add a little salt. Bring to a boil.
Wash the haddock in a basin of cold water.
Place the haddock in the boiling water, ensuring it is fully submerged.
Simmer for 15 minutes.
Scrub the potatoes in cold water.
Dry the potatoes with a cloth.
Peel the potatoes with a sharp knife.
Place the potatoes in a saucepan of cold water.
Boil the potatoes for 20-45 minutes, depending on their size.
Check the potatoes for tenderness with a fork.
Drain the potatoes and sprinkle with a little salt.

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.

Haddock + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together200 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together181 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, butter, egg, sauce, flour, cream):

Chivefits about as well
Shallotfits about as well
Potatothe original
Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, butter, egg, sauce, flour, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.