Name: Cream Salt Fish
Ingredients: salt fish; water; white sauce; toast; broiled sweet potatoes; broiled white potatoes

Why it works: Fish and potato work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 134 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Cream Salt Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the salt fish in boiling water until tender, changing the water once.
Remove the fish from the water and pick it into small pieces.
Mix the fish with a white sauce.
Serve on toast or a platter garnished with broiled sweet or white potatoes.

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 + potatotop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together134 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Fish + saucetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,487 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sweet potato + potatotop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Sauce + sweet potatotop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together165 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + potatotop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,073 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).