Name: Whiting Quenelles
Ingredients: 1 lb fillet of whiting; ½ lb butter; ¼ lb panada; pepper to taste; salt to taste; 2 eggs; fish broth (made from whiting bones)

Why it works: Butter and fish 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 ↓

Whiting Quenelles

Ingredients

Directions

Rub the whiting fillet through a fine sieve.
Add the butter and panada, then season with pepper and salt.
Beat the eggs and mix them in along with the fish broth.
Work the mixture until it is perfectly smooth.

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.

Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Whiting + fishtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together317 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Pepper + fishtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,948 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Whiting + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together510 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).