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Maquereau Marine Aux Olives

A mackerel fillet cooked in water and vinegar, served cold with mayonnaise, olives, cucumber, and watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 140 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Maquereau Marine Aux Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Boil the mackerel in equal parts water and vinegar until cooked.

  2. Remove the fish and place it in a deep dish, pouring the cooking liquid over it.

  3. Refrigerate overnight.

Serve

  1. For serving, carefully remove the fillets from the fish and place them on a dish over ice.

  2. Cover the fillets with mayonnaise sauce and garnish with chopped olives.

  3. Arrange turned olives, cold cucumber fillets, and watercress around the dish, adding aspic jelly if available.

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.

  1. Cucumber + watercresstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together140 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + cucumbertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Olive + watercresstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together684 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Mackerel
Forms the main flesh of the dish, cooked gently in the vinegar liquid.
Vinegar
Acidity in the poaching liquid that sharpens the flavour of the fish.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds richness and fat that coats the cold fillets.
Aspic jelly
Sets into a clear jelly that holds the garnish in place and adds gloss.

The step that matters

Refrigerate overnight. Chilling the fish slowly in its cooking liquid lets it firm up and absorb acidity, so the fillets hold together when lifted out and served cold.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sauce, olive, watercress):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sauce, olive, watercress. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

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