Name: Fish Sauce
Ingredients: 1 pint drawn butter; 1 tablespoon pepper sauce or Worcestershire sauce; a little salt; 6 hard boiled eggs, chopped fine; sliced 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 ↓

Fish Sauce

Ingredients

1 pint drawn butter
1 tablespoon pepper sauce or Worcestershire sauce
a little salt
6 hard boiled eggs, chopped fine
sliced lemon for garnish

Directions

Make the sauce

Prepare 1 pint of drawn butter.
Add 1 tablespoon of pepper sauce or Worcestershire sauce and a little salt.
Stir in 6 chopped hard boiled eggs.

Serve

Pour the sauce over boiled fish.
Garnish with sliced 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).
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).
Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together44,316 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

What each ingredient does

Drawn butter: Forms the rich base of the sauce and carries its flavor over the fish.
Hard boiled eggs: Add body and texture to the sauce as finely chopped pieces.
Pepper sauce or worcestershire sauce: Adds sharp, savory seasoning that cuts through the richness of the butter.

“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.