Name: Sauce for Cod
Ingredients: ½ pint of milk; 2 oz. of butter; 1 oz. of flour; ½ pint of picked shrimps; 1 teaspoon of anchovy sauce; a small grate of nutmeg; a few drops of carmine

Why it works: Anchovy and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,048 recipes mention both. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, fish, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Melt the butter in a saucepan.
Stir in the flour until free from lumps.
Gradually add the milk while stirring continuously.
Add the nutmeg with the milk and bring to a boil.
Boil for five minutes.
Add the shrimps, carmine for color, and anchovy sauce.
Include the liquor from the pan the fish was cooked in.
Serve the sauce around the fish or in a sauceboat.

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.

Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,048 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Milk + buttertop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together81,222 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + shrimptop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,733 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Shrimp + anchovytop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together432 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).
Flour + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together18,411 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, flour, shrimp, anchovy, sauce):

Capersbetter flavor fit
Garlicabout as good a flavor fit
Parsleyabout as good a flavor fit
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, shrimp, anchovy, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).