Name: Fish and Oyster Soup
Ingredients: small fish (any variety); slices of skate (or any plentiful fish); water; coarse sea salt; pepper; oysters (¼ hundred)

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

Fish and Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Stew small fish and slices of skate in sufficient water for several hours.
Strain the broth and season it with salt and pepper.
Before serving, remove the gills from the oysters and add them to the hot soup.
Serve the soup when the oysters are hot and plump.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together496 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together3,948 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pepper + oystertop 22% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together7,663 recipes

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