Name: The Breakfast Book
Ingredients: 1 pound fresh butter; ¼ cup strong gravy; ⅓ cup white wine; Light pie crust; Fish (carp); Butter pieces; Juice of 1 lemon

Why it works: Butter and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

The Breakfast Book

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Mix the butter with the strong gravy and white wine.
Stuff some of this mixture into the carp.
Form the remainder into balls.

Assemble the pie

Cover the dish with a light pie crust.
Place the fish and forcemeat inside.
Add butter pieces.
Squeeze lemon juice on top.
Cover with another layer of crust.

Bake and serve

Bake for 1 hour.
Serve cold.

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.

Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,083 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,832 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
White wine + fishtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together370 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,889 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

Fresh butter: Adds richness and moisture to the forcemeat and the pie filling.
Strong gravy: Adds savoury depth and moisture to the butter mixture.
White wine: Adds acidity and aroma to the butter mixture.
Light pie crust: Forms the sealed pastry casing that holds the filling during baking.

“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.