Name: Salmon, Baked
Ingredients: 1 small fish or slices of a large fish; Forcemeat (filling for the fish); Butter; Oysters (optional); 2 tablespoons port wine; 1 tablespoon ketchup; Juice of 1 lemon

Why it works: Fish and oyster work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 496 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Salmon, Baked

Ingredients

Directions

If using a small fish, turn the tail to the mouth and skewer it.
If using a large fish, cut it into slices and coat with egg, then dip in forcemeat.
Place bits of butter around the fish and add oysters if desired.
Baste the fish occasionally with butter.
When one side is brown, carefully turn it over.
Once the second side is brown, the fish is done.
Remove the fish with all the accompaniments from the baking dish.
For sauce, mix melted butter with port wine, ketchup, and lemon juice, and pour over the fish.

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 + oystertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together496 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,499 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,889 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, oyster, port wine, ketchup):

Lemonthe original
Applefits about as well
Currantfits less well
Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, oyster, port wine, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.