Name: To Make a Nice Fish Cake, From Scraps of Cold Fish
Ingredients: Cold fish; Water; Pepper; 1 Onion; A bunch of sweet herbs; Coarse sea salt; Bread crumbs; Cold potatoes; Fish sauce or anchovy (optional)

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Make a Nice Fish Cake, From Scraps of Cold Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Separate the bones from the cold fish carefully.
Place the bones, head, fins, and tail in a stew-pan and cover with water.
Add pepper, onion, sweet herbs, and salt; stew until a nice gravy forms.
Mince the fish and mix it with bread crumbs and cold potatoes.
Add fish sauce or anchovy if desired.

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.

Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,668 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Fish + potatotop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together134 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, bread, potato, fish sauce):

Tomatofits better
Capsicumfits better
Carrotfits about as well
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, bread, potato, fish sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.