Name: Potted Fishes
Ingredients: fish; butter; cochineal; wine or ketchup; rich wine stock

Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potted Fishes

Ingredients

Directions

Pack the fish smoothly and press them gently together.
Once cold, cover the fish deeply with butter.
When the butter cools, store the fish in a pot.
Boil the juice with wine or ketchup to make a fish sauce.
Serve the potted fish hot in a rich wine stock and butter sauce, ensuring the fish does not boil.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Fish + winetop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together168 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).