Name: Boiled Bass, Rock Fish, Etc
Ingredients: bass or rock fish; drawn butter; 3 boiled eggs

Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Bass, Rock Fish, Etc

Ingredients

bass or rock fish
drawn butter
3 boiled eggs

Directions

Boil the fish plain, leaving the head and tail on, for 30 minutes.
Mix drawn butter with 3 finely chopped boiled eggs in a separate 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.

Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,782 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

Bass or rock fish: Provides the main body of the dish, cooked gently in plain boiling water.
Drawn butter: Adds richness and moisture, coating the mild fish and carrying the flavour of the eggs.
Eggs: Chopped boiled eggs add body and a soft, mild texture to the butter sauce.

“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.