Name: To Dress Salt Fish
Ingredients: Old ling (salt fish); water; parsnips; milk; butter; coarse sea salt; hard-boiled eggs

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Dress Salt Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the old ling in water for 12 hours.
Lay the fish on a board for 12 hours, then soak it in water for another 12 hours.
Place the fish in cold water and boil gently for 15 minutes.
Boil the parsnips until tender, then scrape them.
In a saucepan, combine the scraped parsnips with milk and stir until thick.
Stir in a good piece of butter and a little coarse sea salt.
Serve the parsnips on a plate with the fish dry on the side, and chopped hard-boiled eggs in a bowl.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,432 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).