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Fish and Macaroni

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fish and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring a saucepan of water to a boil and add 1 teaspoon of salt.

  2. Add the macaroni and cook until tender, then cut into small pieces.

  3. Remove the fish from the bones and skin, then chop it up.

  4. In another saucepan, combine the bones and skin with 2 cups of water, a few peppercorns, and a blade of mace.

  5. Simmer to make a stock.

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.

  1. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Fish + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Fish + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More fish and macaroni recipes

Casserole 4 See all 2 →

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