Name: Stewed Mackerel
Ingredients: potatoes; 4-5 mackerel; parsley; pepper; coarse sea salt; water

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Peel the potatoes and place them whole in a saucepan.
Add a little water to the bottom of the saucepan.
Clean the mackerel and cut each into three pieces, removing part of the head.

Stew

Place the mackerel on top of the potatoes.
Season with parsley, pepper, and coarse sea salt.
Cook for about 30 minutes.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes: Absorb cooking liquid and juices, becoming tender and soaking up flavour as they stew.
Mackerel: Provides the main protein and rich oily flavour that the stewing liquid carries.