Name: Fish and Macaroni
Ingredients: 2 oz. macaroni; 1 oz. butter; 1 oz. flour; ½ pint fish stock or milk; 1 teaspoon salt; seasoning to taste

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 ↓

Fish and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

Bring a saucepan of water to a boil and add 1 teaspoon of salt.
Add the macaroni and cook until tender.
Drain and cut the macaroni into small pieces.

Prepare the fish

Remove the fish from the bones and skin, then chop it up.
In a separate saucepan, combine the bones and skin with 1 pint of water, a few peppercorns, and a blade of mace.

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).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + fishtop 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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni: Starch-based pasta that gives the dish its bulk and tender, chewy texture.
Butter: Fat that enriches the sauce and carries flavour.
Flour: Starch that thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with fat.
Fish stock or milk: Liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the body of the sauce.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.