Name: Whiting Forcemeat
Ingredients: 1 whiting; ½ cup soaked bread (panada); 1 oz butter; ⅓ cup Bechamel sauce; 1 egg; 1 tablespoon cream; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; a little grated nutmeg

Why it works: Whiting and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 236 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Whiting Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the meat from the whiting and pound it in a mortar.
Mix in the soaked bread and butter, then rub through a fine sieve.
Transfer to a bowl and gradually mix in the Bechamel sauce, egg, and cream.
Season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.
Test the mixture; if not firm enough, add another egg yolk or a little more soaked bread.

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.

Whiting + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together236 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Whiting + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together135 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, bread, butter, sauce, egg, cream, pepper):

Nutmegthe original
Parsleyfits about as well
Capersfits about as well
Tarragonfits less well

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