Name: Modern Cookery
Ingredients: haddocks (or whiting, fresh herring, or codlings); ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; melted butter; anchovy sauce

Why it works: Haddock and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

haddocks (or whiting, fresh herring, or codlings)
½ teaspoon coarse sea salt
melted butter
anchovy sauce

Directions

Poach the fish

Add a very small bit of salt to water and bring to a simmer.
Add the fish and simmer for 7 to 10 minutes, depending on their size.

Serve

Serve the fish hot with melted butter and anchovy sauce.

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.

Haddock + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together200 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Haddock + anchovytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together75 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,697 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Haddocks: Firm white fish that holds its shape and flakes gently when simmered.
Melted butter: Adds richness and moisture, coating the fish with a silky finish.
Anchovy sauce: Adds a salty, savoury depth that contrasts with the mild fish.

“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.