Name: Fish Cakes
Ingredients: salt or fresh fish; potatoes; cream or butter; salt pork fat

Why it works: Potato and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,668 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Fish Cakes

Ingredients

salt or fresh fish
potatoes
cream or butter
salt pork fat

Directions

Mince the warm fish with potatoes.
Add cream or butter and mix well.
Roll the mixture into flat cakes.
Fry the cakes in a little salt pork fat until golden brown.

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.

Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,668 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together668 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Fish + potatotop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together134 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Cream + porktop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,093 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,481 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).