Why it works: Anchovy and fish 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 ↓
I Boiled Fish
Ingredients
Directions
Fill a saucepan or fish kettle with water and bring it to a boil.
Clean the fish thoroughly in cold water.
Once the water is warm, place the fish in a strainer or on a plate in the water, ensuring it is just covered.
Add enough coarse sea salt to make the water taste salty.
Cover the saucepan and reduce the heat to simmer gently for 20 minutes to 45 minutes, depending on the size of the fish.
Skim the surface occasionally while cooking.
When the skin of the fish begins to crack, it is done.
Carefully remove the fish from the saucepan and place it on a hot dish. Serve with melted butter sauce.
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.
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Anchovy + fishtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together637 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,488 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,697 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Flour + anchovytop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,753 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
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