Name: Dkessed Fish
Ingredients: 2 eels, cut into 2-3 inch pieces; ½ pint meat stock; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; 2 tablespoons mushroom ketchup; pepper, to taste; salt, to taste; pie crust

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Dkessed Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the eels

Remove the heads and tails from the eels.

Make the sauce

Stew the eel pieces in the meat stock until thoroughly cooked.
Strain out the heads and tails from the stock.
Mix in pepper, salt, lemon juice, and mushroom ketchup into the stock.

Bake

Place the eel pieces in a pie dish and pour the sauce over them.
Cover with pie crust and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,423 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Lemon + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,225 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels: Provide the main body of the pie, becoming tender as they stew in the stock.
Meat stock: Cooks the eels and forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury depth.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury flavour of the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup: Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.
Pie crust: Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form a golden top.