Name: Fish Cakes
Ingredients: 2 lbs cooked fish; ½ lb macaroni; 3 oz grated cheese; 1 oz butter; salt; pepper

Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fish Cakes

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.

Prepare

Remove skin and bones from the fish and separate it into large flakes.
Break the macaroni into 1-inch pieces and boil in salted water until tender.
Grease a pie dish.

Assemble and bake

Layer fish in the dish, seasoning with salt and pepper.
Cover with macaroni.
Sprinkle with cheese and seasoning.
Repeat layers until the dish is full.
Dot the top with small pieces of butter.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 20 minutes.

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.

Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Fish + cheesetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together135 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,861 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,948 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fish: Forms the main body of the dish and provides its savory, flaky filling.
Macaroni: Adds bulk and a soft, starchy texture that holds the layers together.
Cheese: Melts into the layers and browns on top, adding richness and savoriness.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, and browns slightly on the top layer as it bakes.

“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.