Name: Smoked Fish with Melted Butter
Ingredients: fish (smoked); cold water; butter; anchovy (to taste); lemon juice (to taste)

Why it works: Fish and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 637 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Smoked Fish with Melted Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the fish in cold water if it is too salty.
Boil the fish until cooked.
Flake the fish, removing the skin and any dark parts.
In a saucepan, melt the butter and flavor it with anchovy and lemon juice to taste.
Add the flaked fish to the melted butter sauce and serve hot.

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 + anchovytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together637 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,697 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,889 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Anchovy + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,080 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).