Name: Fish
Ingredients: fish; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon vinegar

Why it works: Fish and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,036 recipes. Both carry acetoin, which smells butter, cream. The science ↓

Fish

Ingredients

fish
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vinegar

Directions

Prepare

Clean, head, and tail the fish.

Cook

Boil water with salt and vinegar.
Add the fish and cook for 5 minutes.
Remove the fish and drain.

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 + vinegartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,036 recipes

Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish: Is the main protein that gently cooks in the simmering liquid until just set.
Vinegar: Adds a small acidic note to the poaching water, brightening the flavor of the fish.

“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.