Name: Baked Fish
Ingredients: 1 whole fish; ½ cup powdered cracker; 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 egg (optional); ½ cup water; additional butter for gravy; slices of lemon for garnish

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 ↓

Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Clean the inside of the fish thoroughly.
Fill the fish with a stuffing made of powdered cracker, butter, pepper, salt, and egg if desired.
Rub the outside of the fish with salt and Indian meal or some of the stuffing.

Bake and serve

Place the fish in a baking pan with ½ cup of water.
Bake the fish thoroughly.
Add a bit of butter to the gravy before serving.
Garnish with slices of lemon.

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).
Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,889 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Powdered cracker: Forms the bulk of the stuffing and absorbs juices from the fish.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the stuffing and gravy.
Egg: Binds the stuffing so it holds together when baked.

“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.