Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Whitebait, Greenwich Style
Ingredients
Directions
Cut the bread and butter in halves.
Place them in a wicker sieve to remove excess flour.
Heat enough lard in a frying pan to nearly fill it when boiling.
When the fat is hot, add the fish a few at a time.
Remove the fish before they begin to brown and add more.
Drain the fish on blotting paper before the fire.
Serve the fish on a hot dish, piled high in the center.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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