Name: Boiled Fish
Ingredients: 4 pound fish; cheese cloth; coarse sea salt; water; 2 egg yolks, mashed; juice of 1 lemon; small lump of butter; salt and pepper to taste; 2 egg whites, chopped

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Boiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Clean the fish thoroughly, removing the head, tail, and fins.
Fold a piece of cheese cloth over the fish and baste loosely, following its outline.
Lay the fish in hot, slightly salted water and boil steadily for 30 minutes.
When done, carefully unroll the fish onto a hot platter.
To make the sauce, mix cornstarch and water to create a clear sauce.
Stir in the mashed egg yolks, lemon juice, butter, salt, and pepper.
Add the chopped egg whites and mix until the sauce is thick like cream.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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).
Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).