Name: Rechauffe of Salt Cod
Ingredients: 14 oz flour; 1 pint fish stock; salt and pepper to taste; juice of 1 lemon; anchovy essence to taste; butter for cooking; mashed potatoes for serving; brown breadcrumbs for topping

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rechauffe of Salt Cod

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Remove the fish from the bones in nice flakes.
Place the bones in a saucepan with an onion and a sprig of parsley, cover with water, and simmer for 20 minutes.
Strain the broth and let it cool.
Melt butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour, and moisten with the fish stock while stirring continuously.
Bring to a boil and cook for 10 minutes.
Add the fish and any leftover egg sauce, if available.
Season with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and anchovy essence.
Cover the saucepan and heat gently without boiling.
Serve on a flat dish with a border of mashed potatoes.
Top the fish with brown breadcrumbs and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes before serving.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together637 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 potato

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

Shallotfits better
Spinachfits about as well
Asparagusfits about as well
Potatothe original

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