Name: How to Stew Fish
Ingredients: fish; fried onions; butter

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 ↓

How to Stew Fish

Ingredients

fish
fried onions
butter

Directions

Prepare the fish by cleaning and cutting it into pieces.
In a pot, melt a small amount of butter over medium heat.
Add the fried onions and sauté until golden.
Add the fish pieces to the pot and cook until they are tender.
Serve the fish with the gravy made from the butter and onions.

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).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Fish + oniontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).