Name: Fish Loaf
Ingredients: 2 cups cold flaked fish; Salt and pepper to taste; 2 eggs, slightly beaten; 1 cup fine soft bread crumbs; Curry, anchovy, or Worcestershire sauce to taste

Why it works: Fish and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 637 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Fish Loaf

Ingredients

2 cups cold flaked fish
Salt and pepper to taste
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup fine soft bread crumbs
Curry, anchovy, or Worcestershire sauce to taste

Directions

Make the mixture

In a bowl, combine the cold flaked fish and bread crumbs.
Stir in the slightly beaten eggs and seasonings.

Steam and serve

Transfer the mixture to a greased mold.
Cover and steam for 30 minutes.
Serve with Egg or Hollandaise 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.

Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together637 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,668 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,260 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).
Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,330 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Bind the mixture and set when heated, holding the loaf together.
Bread crumbs: Absorb moisture and give the loaf body so it stays tender rather than dense.
Cold flaked fish: Forms the bulk of the loaf and supplies its main flavor and texture.

“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.