Name: Baked Codfish
Ingredients: 2 bowls mashed potatoes; 1 bowl picked codfish; a little butter

Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Codfish

Ingredients

2 bowls mashed potatoes
1 bowl picked codfish
a little butter

Directions

Prepare

Freshen the codfish before using.
Combine the mashed potatoes and picked codfish in a bowl. Add a little butter to the mixture and mix well.

Bake and serve

Transfer to a baking dish.
Bake until heated through and slightly 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.

Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes: Forms the bulk and soft, moist body that holds the fish together.
Codfish: Provides the main flavour and protein, with flakes that stay tender in the mash.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture, and helps the surface brown lightly in the oven.

“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.