Name: Salmon or Fish Sandwiches
Ingredients: ½ pound cold boiled fish; 2 ounces butter; ½ lemon; anchovy sauce; watercress; slices of bread and butter

Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Salmon or Fish Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Flake the cold boiled fish and mix it with the butter, a little anchovy sauce, and seasoning.
Squeeze a little lemon juice over the mixture occasionally.

Assemble and serve

Spread the fish mixture over thin slices of buttered bread.
Sprinkle with watercress or nasturtium leaves.
Press the slices together and cut into desired shapes.

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.

Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together579 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together637 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,668 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled fish: Forms the bulk of the filling, providing the main texture and protein of the sandwich.
Butter: Binds the flaked fish into a spreadable filling and adds richness and moisture.
Lemon: Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and fish flavour.
Anchovy sauce: Adds a salty, savoury depth to the fish filling.

“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.