Name: Boiling Fish
Ingredients: 1 fresh salmon; salt (to taste); whiting farce; crawfish tails; large crawfish; parsley; Dutch sauce au supreme; capers

Why it works: Whiting and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 236 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Boiling Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon by stuffing it with whiting farce.
Bring a pot of water to a boil and add salt.
Submerge the salmon in boiling water and cook on high heat.
After a few minutes, reduce heat and simmer for two hours if the fish is large.
Once cooked, remove the salmon, drain it, and place it on a serving dish.
Garnish with parsley and crawfish tails, and serve hot with Dutch sauce au supreme and capers.

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.

Whiting + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together236 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together678 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Salmon + caperstop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together458 recipes

Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
Whiting + caperstop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).