Name: Salt Fish, Egg Sauce, Parsnips
Ingredients: salt fish; eggs; butter; parsnips

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 ↓

Salt Fish, Egg Sauce, Parsnips

Ingredients

salt fish
eggs
butter
parsnips

Directions

Prepare the salt fish by soaking it in water to remove excess salt.
Boil the parsnips until tender, then drain and set aside.
In a saucepan, melt butter and add beaten eggs, stirring until just set to make the egg sauce.
Serve the salt fish with the egg sauce and boiled parsnips.

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).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,782 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + parsniptop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,051 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).
Fish + parsniptop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together57 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).