Name: Steamed Fish
Ingredients: 1 whole fish; butter

Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Steamed Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

1 whole fish
butter

Directions

Prepare

Skin and cut the meat from the backbone, getting as close to the bone as possible.
Butter a plate and lay the fish on it.

Cook

Cover with another plate and steam over hot water for 20 minutes to 30 minutes.
Alternatively, cook in the oven in the same manner.

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.

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

Whole fish: Provides the main protein, which turns opaque and flakes as it cooks.
Butter: Adds richness and a little fat so the fish stays moist against the plate.

“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.